Gunmen seize 315 in latest Nigerian mass school kidnapping
Lagos, Nigeria (AFP)—Gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 students and teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria, a Christian group said Saturday, as security fears mounted in Africa’s most populous nation.
The early Friday raid on St Mary’s co-education school in Niger state in central Nigeria came after gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had earlier reported 227 people seized, but the new number came “after a verification exercise” following the early Friday mass kidnapping, and added that “The total number of victims abducted … is now 303 students and 12 teachers”.
The number of boys and girls kidnapped from St Mary’s is almost half of the school’s student population of 629.
The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of students and teachers abducted.
Niger state governor Mohammed Umar Bago told reporters on Saturday said the intelligence department and police were “doing the head count”.
Bago, whose government had ordered some schools shut, also announced the closure of all schools in his state. Nearby states have also shuttered all theirs as a precautionary measure.
The national education ministry has also ordered 47 boarding secondary schools across the country be shut.
President Bola Tinubu has cancelled international engagements, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to handle the crisis.
The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed and dozens abducted, have happened since US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the killing of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram jihadists at Chibok in northeastern Borno state more than a decade ago. Some of those girls are still missing.
On Saturday Stella Shaibu, a 40-year-old nurse, collected her daughter from a government school in Bwari, an hour drive from Abuja following the directive to shut schools.
Questioning how it cannot even be safe on the outskirts of the capital, she concludes “government is not doing anything” to curb insecurity.
“How can 300 students be taken away at the same time? How can, within three-four days, children have been abducted?”
“If there is something that the American government can do to salvage this situation, I’m totally in support,” she told AFP.
