Nigerians Protest After Multiple Kidnappings Close To Capital

(Bloomberg) -- Nigerian protesters blocked a key road outside the country’s capital to voice their outrage after gunmen abducted people from their area.

Hundreds of demonstrators disrupted traffic on the expressway that connects the capital, Abuja, with the northern town of Kaduna on Monday morning.

Attackers took six people from the town of Suleja early Monday, the police in Niger state, where the incident happened, said in a statement. Nigerian media organizations said between 12 and 15 people were kidnapped. A dozen people were abducted on May 20 from the same area, which lies less than 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from Abuja’s northwestern suburbs, according to the Premium Times news website.

The police “are aware of a few cases of kidnapping in that area,” a spokesman, Wasiu Abiodun, said by phone. The protesters had been dispersed and traffic was flowing normally by Monday afternoon, he said.

Abductions and killings have become increasingly commonplace in Nigeria, with students being targeted in particularly brazen assaults. The government is also locked in a decade-long war with Jihadist insurgents in the northeast of the country, a persistent conflict between nomadic cattle herders and crop farmers in the central and southern regions, and a nascent separatist rebellion in the southeast.

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