Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 100 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school last month, a UN source and local media said on Sunday, although the fate of another 165 students and staff believed to remain captive remains unclear.
In November, 315 students and staff from the co-educational boarding school St. Mary in north-central Niger state as the country reeled under a wave of mass kidnappings reminiscent of Boko Haram’s infamous 2014 abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok.
About 50 escaped soon after, so 265 were probably captured.
According to a United Nations source, 100 children are to be handed over to local government officials in Niger State on Monday.
Read also | School kidnappings have become a cruel fact of life in Nigeria
“Tomorrow they will be handed over to the government of Niger State,” the source told AFP.
Local media also reported that the release of 100 children had been secured, without offering details on whether it was through negotiations or military force, or the fate of the remaining students and staff believed to be still in the hands of the kidnappers.
The release of 100 children was confirmed to AFP by the president’s spokesman, Sunday Dare.
“We have been praying and waiting for their return, if it is true then it is good news,” said Daniel Atori, a spokesman for Bishop Bulus Yohanna of the Kontagora Diocese, which runs the school.
“However, we are not officially informed and we have not been properly informed by the federal government.”
American diplomatic pressure
Although kidnapping for ransom is common in the country as a way for criminals and armed groups to make a quick buck, a spate of mass abductions in November saw hundreds of abductions, drawing uncomfortable attention to Nigeria’s already grim security situation.
The country faces a protracted jihadist insurgency in the northeast, while armed “bandit” gangs kidnap and loot villages in the northwest, and farmers and herders clash over dwindling land and resources in the center.
On a smaller scale, the restive southeast of the country is also haunted by armed groups linked to separatist movements.
The wave of kidnappings came as Nigeria faced a diplomatic offensive from the United States, where President Donald Trump claimed the mass killing of Christians amounted to “genocide” and threatened military intervention.
The Nigerian government and independent analysts have rejected this framing, which has long been used by the Christian right in the United States and Europe.
One of the first mass kidnappings to attract international attention was in 2014, when Boko Haram jihadists stole nearly 300 girls from their boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok.
A decade later, Nigeria’s kidnapping-for-ransom crisis has “consolidated into a structured, profit-seeking industry” that raked in about $1.66 million between July 2024 and June 2025, according to a recent report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy.
Disclaimer: This story was published from the agency’s news feed without editing the text. Only the title was changed.
