RipplesMetrics: Over 8,000 Nigerians killed in 2023

Data gathered by RipplesMetrics has shown that no fewer than 8,734 Nigerians were reported killed in various insecurity incidents that occurred between January to December of 2023.

The data were filtered from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) which collects real-time data on the locations, dates, actors, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world.

Going by this figure, this would mean that an average of 24 persons were killed daily in Nigeria within the year under review.

When compared with the previous year, 2022, the fatality rate dropped by 18.78 per cent. In 2022, according to ACLED, 10,754 people were killed which translated to about 29 deaths recorded daily.

According to the data, the cause of these killings emanated from abduction, air-borne strikes, armed clashes, attacks, arrests, disrupted weapon use and excessive force against protesters. Others include protests, mob attacks or violent demonstrations, sexual violence, communal clashes and riots.

Some of the assailants include security operatives, unidentified armed men, separatists and cult groups, kidnappers, private security operatives, ethnic militias, and terrorist groups.

In 2023, just like several other years, Nigeria battled with insurgency crises especially with growing attacks in the Northern region of the country. While deilvering his 2023 new year speech, former President Muhammadu Buhari, said that the federal government alongisde other affected state governors had initiated a plan to comabct the reoccuring crises.

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He said,”Over 82,000 insurgents with their families have surrendered to the Nigerian military. A number of surrendered insurgents are currently being processed by the rehabilitation (Operation Safe Corridor) program. The fight against banditry, kidnapping and other crimes in the North West and other regions is gaining momentum and showing very clear results.”

Also, upon assumption into office as president, Bola Tinubu also said that security shall be the top priority of his administration

He said, “To effectively tackle this menace, we shall reform both our security DOCTRINE and its ARCHITECTURE. We shall invest more in our security personnel, and this means more than an increase in number. We shall provide, better training, equipment, pay and firepower.

However, checks by RipplesMetric shows that between May 29 and December 31, 5135 peoeple have been killed.

Further findings showed that Borno State had the highest death rate with 2,816 people killed within the year under review. It was followed by Zamfara and Niger states with 742 and 643 death respectively in 2023.

The states with the lowest death rate are Jigawa, Gombe and Ekiti state recording 2, 3 and 5 deaths respectively.

When broken down by geopolitical zone, states in the North-Central reported 1,909 deaths, the North-East reported 3,428 deaths, and the North-West region had 2,274 deaths.

For the Sothern region, the South-East recorded 491 deaths, the South-South recorded 393 deaths, and the South-West lost 239 people to attacks.

By James Odunayo

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