Gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 students and teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria, a Christian group said on Saturday, as security fears mounted in Africa’s most populous nation.
The early Friday raid on St Mary’s co-educational school in Niger state in western 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” that concluded 303 students and 12 teachers were abducted.
The number of boys and girls – aged between eight and 18 years – kidnapped from St Mary’s is almost half the school’s student population of 629.
The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of students and teachers abducted.
Niger’s state governor, Mohammed Umar Bago, said on Saturday 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 as attention focuses on rescuing the students and teachers. Nearby states have also shuttered all their schools as a precaution.
In addition, the national education ministry has ordered that 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 the US president, Donald Trump, threatened military action over what he called the killing of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth called on the government to “take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians”, during talks with the Nigerian national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, the Pentagon said on Friday.
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.
In a video clip shared by CAN, a distraught-looking, unidentified St Mary’s staff member describes hearing the sounds of motorcycles and cars before “there was serious bang, bang on different gates of the compound”.
“Children were crying,” she said, describing her panic while looking for keys to the section where the crying was loudest. A security guard was heard groaning and after some time she heard the gang driving away.
The “attackers operated aggressively and without interruption for nearly three hours, moving through dormitories”, said the local Catholic diocese.
Meanwhile, about 600km away, on the outskirts of Abuja, 40-year-old nurse Stella Shaibu collected her daughter on Saturday from a school in Bwari, after the directive to close some boarding schools.
“How can 300 students be taken away at the same time?” she asked, concluding that the “government is not doing anything” to curb insecurity.
“If there is something that the American government can do to salvage this situation, I’m totally in support,” she told AFP.
In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during a service that was being broadcast online. Dozens of worshippers are believed to have been abducted.
For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have been killing thousands and conducting kidnappings for ransom in rural areas of northwest and central Nigeria, where there is little state presence.
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks but bandit gangs seeking ransom payments often target schools in rural areas where security is weak.
Gangs have camps in a vast forest straddling several states in the west.
Although bandits have no ideological leanings and are motivated by financial gain, their increasing alliance with jihadists from the north-east has been a source of concern for authorities and security analysts.
