SERAP Urges UN Chief To Report Nigeria To Security Council Over K!llings, ∆bductions
SERAP Urges UN Chief To Report Nigeria To Security Council Over Killings, Abductions
The organization made the call in an open letter dated May 30, 2026, signed by its deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, to urgently report Nigeria’s escalating insecurity to the UN Security Council.
The organization made the call in an open letter dated May 30, 2026, signed by its deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare.
SERAP requested Guterres to invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter, which empowers the Secretary-General to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter that may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.
According to the rights group, the country’s worsening insecurity is marked by mass abductions, killings, attacks on civilians, and mass displacement across Oyo, Benue, Borno, Plateau, Kaduna, Zamfara, and several other states.
The letter read in part, “The scale, persistence, and regional implications of the insecurity and grave human rights crisis in Nigeria pose a threat to international peace and security and risk aggravating existing threats in the region.
“The crisis in Nigeria is not merely a domestic law-enforcement issue. Its effects increasingly implicate regional peace and security through cross-border movement of armed groups and weapons, large-scale displacement, growing instability extending beyond Nigeria’s borders, and weakening human rights protection and rule-of-law institutions.”
SERAP highlighted several recent violent incidents across the country to support its petition. Notable among them was the May 15, 2026, coordinated attack by armed men on multiple schools in the Ahoro Esinele community in the Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.
During the attack on Community Grammar School, Baptist Nursery and Primary School, and L.A. Primary School, at least 25 pupils and seven teachers were abducted, while an assistant headmaster was killed.
The organization also cited the recent abduction of secondary school students and travelers in Benue State who were commuting to sit their university entrance examinations.
Other incidents highlighted include recent bomb explosions in Maiduguri, Borno State, which killed at least 23 people and injured over 100 others, as well as separate coordinated raids in Katsina and Adamawa states that left 30 and 29 people dead, respectively.
SERAP noted that the United Nations had previously raised concerns over the country’s humanitarian crisis, warning that the persistent violence has displaced millions, disrupted livelihoods, and worsened food insecurity.
SERAP reminded Secretary-General Guterres that his recent historical invocation of Article 99 regarding the humanitarian disaster in Gaza proves that the UN must act when nation-states fail to protect their own populations from large-scale human suffering.
Under international law, the Nigerian government bears direct responsibility for these atrocities due to its total failure to exercise due diligence, investigate, or punish non-state actors whose recurrent patterns of violence are entirely foreseeable.
The group is demanding that the UN Security Council immediately place Nigeria on its formal agenda, mandate public briefings on the country’s abductions, and force the Tinubu administration to comply with international human rights obligations while providing reparations to victims.
SaharaReporters notes that despite billions of naira budgeted for defence, the Nigerian security architecture has remained largely reactive, allowing heavily armed bandit cartels and terrorist factions to run parallel governance structures across rural communities in the North and South.
