Above 220 students and teachers abducted from Nigerian schools

LAGOS,

Officials claimed Friday that gunmen seized 227 students and instructors from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, marking the second brazen school kidnapping in a week.

According to a spokeswoman for the Christian Association of Nigeria, all 215 students taken from St Mary’s School in Niger State were girls, and 12 teachers were also abducted.

As security concerns grew in Africa’s most populous country, authorities in the neighbouring states of Katsina and Plateau ordered the closure of all schools as a precaution.

The Niger state administration closed numerous schools. President Bola Tinubu suspended international commitments, including the G20 conference in Johannesburg, to deal with the issue, which began on Monday when gunmen invaded a secondary school in Kebbi state, northwestern Nigeria, abducting 25 girls.

The two abductions and an attack on a church in the country’s west, in which two people were slain, occurred after US President Donald Trump threatened military action in response to the murders of Christians in Nigeria.

Nigeria is still reeling from the kidnapping of almost 300 girls by Boko Haram militants in Chibok, Borno State. Some were kept for years.

• St Mary’s School in Papiri, Agwarra, Niger State, rejected an order.

The Catholic Church in the area said in a statement that “armed attackers invaded” the school between 1:00 and 3:00 am, abducting students, teachers, and a security guard, who was shot.

“Some students escaped, and parents have begun to come (to) pick up their children because the school must be closed,” the Christian Association of Nigeria stated in a statement, citing 227 abductions.

For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have intensified their attacks in rural parts of northwest and central Nigeria, where there is little governmental presence, killing thousands and kidnapping for ransom.

The gangs maintain camps in a huge forest that spans multiple states, including Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi, and Niger, from whence they launch attacks.

A UN source, commenting on the condition of anonymity, stated that the St Mary’s children were most likely taken to the Birnin Gwari forest in nearby Kaduna state.

• The Niger state administration accused the Catholic school of violating orders to temporarily close all boarding schools in the state due to an “increased threat level” in areas bordering Kebbi.

Niger state police claimed tactical teams and military personnel were looking for the students. It stated that security agents were “combing the forests with a view to rescuing the abducted students.”

Nigeria’s president ordered security forces to be on high alert and assigned defence minister Alhaji Bello Matawalle to lead the search for the Kebbi schoolgirls.

His office stated that the minister had “experience dealing with banditry and mass kidnapping” when he obtained the release of 279 kids aged 10 to 17 who were kidnapped from a secondary school in northeastern Zamfara state in 2021.

In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during an internet service. Dozens of believers are thought to have been abducted.

As Nigeria faces multiple security difficulties, hostage-taking has spread across the country and become a preferred tactic of bandit gangs and terrorists.

Although bandits have no ideological beliefs and are motivated solely by financial gain, their growing collaboration with jihadists from the northeast has raised concerns among officials and security professionals.

Jihadists have been conducting an insurgency in the northeast for 16 years, with the goal of creating a caliphate.

Since 2019, Islamist warfare in the northeast has killed over 40,000 people and displaced almost two million.