By Segun Martins-
Northern Nigeria is in panic after gunmen from a criminal gang kidnapped 25 female students and killed a staff member in an early morning raid on a northwestern Nigerian girls’ secondary school on Monday, police said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for abducting the girls from the boarding school in Kebbi state and their motivation was unclear.
Nigeria is a country under siege, particularly in the northern states where an Islamic insurgency is rife from amorphous groups of armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping for ransom – sometimes totalling thousands of dollars – and have been responsible for several high-profile abductions across Nigeria’s northern region. Kidnappings, attacks on villages and along major roads have become common because of the limited security presence.
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The attack comes more than a decade after 276 girls were abducted from Chibok in the restive northeastern Borno state and sparked international outcry that and rallied people around the “#BringBackOurGirls” global social media campaign.
Since then, there has been a string of other abductions involving school children across northern parts of Nigeria.
Police on Monday said the gang armed with “sophisticated weapons, shooting sporadically, stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School” in Kebbi state at about 4:00am (0300 GMT).
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Police were deployed but “unfortunately, the suspected bandits had already scaled through the fence of the school and abducted twenty-five students from their hostel to unknown destination”, police said in a statement.
The attackers, locally referred to as “bandits,” arrived on motorcycles and in cars around 4 a.m., firing sophisticated weapons to create panic. They scaled the school’s perimeter fence and forced their way into the girls’ dormitory/hostel.
One staff member, the vice principal, was killed while attempting to block the bandits from entering the hostel, and a security guard later died from gunshot wounds. Two of the abducted girls managed to escape by running away across farmland as their captors were leading them into nearby bushes.
Motivation: While no group has claimed responsibility, analysts and local sources indicate that these criminal gangs, or bandits, are primarily motivated by ransom payments, seeing that kidnapping schoolchildren often attracts attention and money.
Nigerian police tactical units reportedly engaged the attackers in a gun duel, but the bandits had already fled with the girls. A coordinated search and rescue operation involving the military, police, and local vigilantes is currently underway in the surrounding forests and suspected escape routes.
Context
This incident is the latest in a persistent wave of school kidnappings across northern Nigeria, a crisis that has escalated over the past decade. Since the notorious 2014 Chibok girls abduction by Boko Haram, more than 1,680 pupils have been kidnapped from schools in the country. The frequent attacks highlight a widespread security crisis, leading to a climate of fear among families and putting Nigeria’s commitment to the Safe Schools Declaration under scrutiny.
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