Nigeria's chief kidnap mastermind Daudawa killed
The Nigerian government has declared the killing of the mastermind behind the kidnap operations of school students in different parts of Nigeria.
A spokesman of the
northwestern state of Zamfara said Auwalu Daudawa was
killed, nine days after he laid down arms and vowed never to carry out kidnap
operations again.
Daudawa surrendered to Nigerian
authorities in February this year in the light of an amnesty program in
Zamfara.
He said he would not look
back and would start a new course in his life.
He masterminded four
kidnap operations since December last year. The operations spread anger across
Nigeria, especially given the fact that over 300 school students were involved
in these operations.
On 16 February, 44
people, mostly children, were kidnapped from a school in Niger, a state in the
Middle Belt region of Nigeria.
Daudawa,
43, is a gang leader who cooperated with the ISIS-leaning Boko Haram group. He
masterminded the kidnap operations in return for a portion of the ransoms the
terrorist group got in return for releasing the kidnapped school students.
The chief kidnap mastermind
used to work in the theft of livestock before turning to the smuggling of arms.
He travelled to Libya and
returned to Nigeria with a large cache of arms he sold to local gangs in
Nigeria.
Later, however, Daudawa
hammered out an alliance deal with Boko Haram and helped the terrorist group
sell the arms it seized from Nigerian troops.
