Armed gangs have kidnapped people, including priests, for ransom from villages and along highways mainly in the northwest, and the practice has spread to other parts of the country, increasing insecurity in Africa’s most populous nation. Zita Ihedoro, secretary general of the Sisters of Jesus, the Savior Generalate, said the four nuns were abducted while traveling from Rivers state to Imo for a thanksgiving Mass on Sunday. “We are asking for intense prayer for their speedy and safe release,” Ihedoro said in a statement. The police spokesman in Imo, Michael Abattam, said the officers were chasing the kidnappers. “Right now we’re on their trail,” Abattam told CNN on Tuesday. “We are doing everything to see that they (the nuns) will be saved.” In the northwest, the Nigerian military has launched an airstrike to wipe out armed groups responsible for abducting civilians from villages and towns in the region. “In the North West in particular, the results of raids carried out by NAF (Nigerian Air Force) aircraft revealed that several terrorists have been eliminated and their pockets destroyed,” the Nigerian Air Force said in a recent statement.
