The International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, has disclosed that 23,659 Nigerians are missing from different locations across the country.
It made the worrisome revelation on Saturday in Yola.
According to the organisation, most of the missing persons were victims of armed conflicts and other forms of violence.
The ICRC said concerted efforts by relatives to get the missing people back to their families had not yielded results.
The Protection of Family Link Officer of the ICRC, Mr Benson Lee, in a message delivered in Yola as the ICRC marked this year's International Day of the Disappeared, indicated that cases of missing persons are particularly rampant in Borno State where insurgency has been most severe.
Lee said 67 per cent of the number of missing persons in Nigeria occurred in Borno State.
About 59 percent of the missing persons overall were minors at the time of disappearance, he added.
Lee, stating that the organisation has been behind retracing of several missing persons and reuniting them with their families, urged all parties of conflict to make every effort to prevent people from going missing.
The ICRC official, appealing for empathy for families of missing people, said, "Families of missing persons need to feel that they are not alone and their loved ones are not forgotten."
