Armed men They kidnapped more than 200 students in the assault on a school in northwest Nigeria, according to a teacher and local residents, in one of the largest plagiarisms recorded in years in this West African country.
Mass kidnappings for ransom are common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, especially in educational centers.although these attacks had recently decreased.
Kaduna state authorities reported on Friday the attack carried out the day before at the Kuriga school, but did not detail the number of hostages because they were still counting them.
At least one person died during the assault, according to some residents.
Thursday’s kidnapping occurs almost ten years after Boko Haram jihadists kidnapped more than 250 Chibok schoolgirls, in northeastern Nigeria, sparking international outrage. Some of those girls are still missing.
Sani Abdullahi, one of the teachers at the GSS Kuriga school, explained that some staff and students were able to escape while the assailants fired shots into the air.
“We are trying to determine the real number of kidnapped children,” he told local officials.
“In Kuriga secondary school there are 187 missing, while in the primary school, 125 children were missing but 25 returned,” he said.
A local resident, Muhammad Adam, shared a similar assessment with AFP.
“More than 280 have been kidnapped. At first we thought there were 200, but after a detailed count we discovered that the kidnapped children are a little more than 280,” he said.
“We implore the government (…) to help us with security,” asked another resident, Musa Muhammed, who claimed to have heard “bandit shots” early in the morning.
“For now we do not know the number of children or students kidnapped,” Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani told reporters at the scene.
“No child will be abandoned,” he assured.
Estimates of the number of people kidnapped or missing in Nigeria often decline as people who manage to flee attackers return home.
Amnesty International condemned the abductions in Kaduna and urged authorities to better protect schools. These “should be safe places, and no child would have to choose between his education and her life,” the NGO wrote on the social network X.
President Bola Ahmed Tinud came to power in 2023 promising, like his predecessors, to confront the enormous challenge of insecurity, fueled among others by jihadist groups and bandits in the northeast.
In recent years, hundreds of children and students have been mass abducted in northwestern and central Nigeria. Most were released after paying a ransom, after weeks or months in captivity.
More than 100 women are missing in the northeast since last week, following a mass kidnapping attributed to jihadists.
Source: Ambito
