Nigerian security forces on Tuesday stepped up a manhunt for 25 girls abducted by gunmen from a boarding school in northwestern Kebbi state, the latest in a series of school kidnappings highlighting the country’s deepening insecurity.
Police said armed men on motorcycles stormed Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the town of Maga at around 4 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Monday in what appeared to be a carefully coordinated attack.
The assailants exchanged fire with police before scaling the school’s perimeter fence and seizing the students.
“We must find these children. Act decisively and professionally on all intelligence. Success is not optional,” Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, told troops during a visit to Kebbi on Tuesday.
Local resident Nazifi Isa said he first heard of the raid after dawn prayers at a nearby mosque. He then rode his motorbike to the school, where he discovered that one of his two daughters was among those taken.
“Since yesterday, we haven’t eaten, and my wife is in tears. I can’t even go back home to see her because I know how distraught she is,” Isa told Reuters by phone.
NIGERIA UNDER PRESSURE FROM TRUMP
The abduction comes as Nigeria faces mounting pressure from the United States after President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he describes as the persecution of Christians by Islamist militants such as Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram.
Nigeria is fighting Islamist insurgents in the northeast, while ransom kidnappings by armed gangs have surged in the northwest and violent clashes between herders and farmers persist in the central “middle belt” region.
ISWAP said its fighters abducted and executed an army general in the northeast over the weekend, dealing a setback to Nigeria’s counterinsurgency efforts.
Local media reported that on Monday a separate armed group kidnapped 64 people, including women and children, in Zamfara state, which shares a border with Kebbi.
Many abductions are never formally recorded because they occur in remote communities with limited communications.
ECHOES OF CHIBOK KIDNAPPING
At Maga school, parents lingered in the hope their children would be found alive. The attack has stirred painful memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of more than 300 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok, an incident that drew global condemnation.
Some of the Chibok girls later escaped or were freed following negotiations, but many remain missing.
Since then, hundreds more students have been seized from schools and universities across northern Nigeria in a wave of mass kidnappings often driven by ransom demands.