Armed assailants attacked a secondary school in Kebbi state in the northwest of the country Nigeria kidnapped 25 schoolgirls before dawn on Monday and killed at least one member of staff, Associated Press The agency informed about it with reference to local authorities.
No group has claimed responsibility for detaining the girls from a boarding school in Kebbi state, and their motive remains unclear.
According to the police, the schoolgirls were taken away from the hostels at 4 am on Monday. The school is located in Maga, Danko-Wasagu area of the state, Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi, police spokesman, said.
The attackers were armed with “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged gunfire with guards before abducting the girls, Mr Kotarkoshi said.
Mr. Kotarkoshi reported that one person was killed and another was injured, although a local resident whose daughter and granddaughter were kidnapped in the raid believed the death toll to be two.
“The combined team is currently combing the suspected escape routes and surrounding woods as part of a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the kidnapped students and arresting the perpetrators,” the spokeswoman said.
The kidnapping crisis
Nigeria faces a multi-dimensional security challenge, namely from amorphous groups of armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping for ransom – sometimes amounting to thousands of pounds – and are responsible for several high-profile kidnappings across the northern region of the country. Kidnappings, attacks on villages and incidents along major roads have become commonplace due to the limited presence of security forces.
These bandits are not linked to militant groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), whose attacks on communities and government facilities are religiously motivated.
“We were told that the attackers entered the school with many motorcycles. They first went straight to the teacher’s house and killed him before killing the guard,” said Abdulkarim Abdullahi Maga.
Armed groups have been targeting schoolchildren in the region since 2014, when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 students from Chibok in Borno state. This mass kidnapping marked the beginning of a new era of fear, and dozens of people remain captive.
At least 1,500 students have been detained since the Chibok kidnappings, as armed groups increasingly see kidnappings as a lucrative way to finance other crimes and control villages in the mineral-rich but poorly policed region.
In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state of Kaduna.
However, school raids have subsided in recent years as state governments have introduced security measures in hotspots, including extended closures of educational facilities.
