Omodele Adigun
International Committee of the Red Cross says no fewer than 23,659 people have gone missing from across Nigeria.
ICRC disclosed this in Yola, on Saturday.
It said inspite of efforts to get missing people back to their families after separation forced mostly by armed conflicts and other forms of violence, a large number are still missing or have disappeared without any trace.
ICRC Protection of Family Link Officer, Mr Benson Lee, in a message delivered in Yola during this year’s International Day of the Disappeared, indicated that cases of missing persons are particularly rampant in Borno State, where insurgency has been most severe.
Lee said 67 per cent of the number of missing persons in Nigeria occurred in Borno State.
About 59 percent of the missing persons overall were minors at the time of disappearance, he added.
Lee, stating that the organisation has been behind retracing of several missing persons and reuniting them with their families, urged all parties of conflict to make every effort to prevent people from going missing.
The ICRC official, while appealing for empathy for families of missing people, said, “Families of missing persons need to feel that they are not alone and their loved ones are not forgotten.”
