NEWS : Nine Nigerians were killed every day in 2020

 

Three thousand, three hundred and twenty-six. That is the number of Nigerians that were reported to have been killed as a result of insecurity in 2020, according to data sourced and analysed by .

After reviewing daily media reports in 2020 as well as data from the Council on Foreign Relations, TheCable found that on the average, nine Nigerians died daily in various attacks and incidents reported from January to December.

The year 2020 began on a sour note on January 1, when Iliya Dafet, a retired teacher, was shot dead by gunmen who invaded his home in Barkin Ladi local government area of Plateau state.

That incident opened the floodgate for a hundred others that became a grisly wellspring of killings, looting and agony.

n the days, weeks and months following, 734 other attacks took place across the country, according to media reports studied by TheCable, all of which have been compiled here.

 study did not touch on those killed by security operatives such as the many that died in Enugu state when a security team clamped down on members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in August.

It also did not include deaths of suspected criminals or others such as Boko Haram insurgents.

 sent an enquiry via text message to all the police state commands and the force headquarters, notifying them of the casualty figure in an attempt to crosscheck the statistics with official data, but none provided police updated records on victims of insecurity in 2020.

 found that Gombe was the state with the least number of deaths in such attacks and incidents, recording only one on September 16 when a farmer allegedly killed a motorcyclist.

This was closely followed by Kebbi which reported three deaths; Enugu, five; and Jigawa, nine.

Borno state, which has remained the epicentre of Boko Haram insurgency for the past decade, recorded the highest number of casualties at 665 — 20 percent of the total casualties.

Next in line was Kaduna which accounted for 14.7 percent of the casualties (489); Katsina, 11.3 percent (375); and Zamfara, 6.6 percent (219).