Gunmen kidnapped 315 pupils and teachers from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, officials said on Friday, in the second brazen school abduction in a week.
All of the 303 students taken from St. Mary’s school in Niger state were girls, a spokesman for the Christian Association of Nigeria said, adding that 12 teachers were also abducted.
Amid mounting fears over security in Africa’s most populous nation, authorities in the nearby states of Katsina and Plateau ordered all schools to close as a precautionary measure.
Photo: Christian Association of Nigeria via A
The Niger state government closed many schools. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu canceled international engagements, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to handle the crisis which came after gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in Kebbi state in northwestern Nigeria, abducting 25 girls.
The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed, have happened since US President Donald Trump threatened military action over the killing of Christians in Nigeria.
Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram militants at Chibok in Borno state. Some were held for years.
St. Mary’s school is in Papiri in the Agwarra area of Niger state.
The Catholic Church in the area in a statement said that “armed attackers invaded” the school between 1am and 3am, abducting pupils, teachers and a security guard, who was shot.
“Some students escaped and parents have started coming [to] pick up their children as the school has to be shut down,” the Christian Association of Nigeria said in its statement which gave the figure of 227 abducted.
For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have been intensifying attacks in rural areas of northwest and central Nigeria, where there is little state presence, killing thousands and conducting kidnappings for ransom.
The gangs have camps in a vast forest straddling several states including Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi and Niger from where they launch attacks.
A UN source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the St Mary’s children had probably been taken to the Birnin Gwari forest in nearby Kaduna state.
The Niger state government accused the Catholic school of defying orders to temporarily close all boarding schools in parts of the state following an intelligence report of an “increased threat level” in areas bordering Kebbi.
Niger state police said its tactical units and the military were searching for the pupils.
Security agencies were “combing the forests with a view to rescue the abducted students,” the police said.
Tinubu put security forces on high alert and sent Nigerian Minister of Defence Alhaji Bello Matawalle to lead the search for the Kebbi school girls.
Tinubu’s office said Matawalle had “experience in dealing with banditry and mass kidnapping,” after he secured the release of 279 students aged between 10 and 17 who had been kidnapped from a secondary school in 2021 in northwestern Zamfara state.
As Nigeria grapples with security challenges on several fronts, hostage-taking has spiraled nationwide and become a favored tactic of bandit gangs and militants.
Although bandits have no ideological leanings and are motivated by financial gain, their increasing alliance with militants from the northeast has been a source of concern for authorities and security analysts.
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