Nigeria: Gunmen abduct over 300 schoolchildren, teachers

A Christian group said on Saturday that 315 students and teachers were seized a day earlier in Nigeria’s second mass school kidnapping in a week as security fears grew in Africa’s most populous country.

The raid on St Mary’s school in central Nigeria’s Niger state in the early hours of Friday came after gunmen attacked a secondary school in neighboring Kebbi state on Monday and abducted 25 girls.

The Christian Association of Nigeria said the new number came “following a verification exercise” following the mass kidnapping in the early hours of Friday, adding: “The total number of kidnapped victims now stands at 303 students and 12 teachers.”
The number of students missed is almost half of the school’s 629 registered students.

Authorities in nearby Katsina and Plateau states ordered the closure of all schools as a precautionary measure.

To deal with the crisis, the Niger state government closed many schools and President Bola Tinubu canceled international meetings, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg. The two kidnapping operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country in which two people were killed have come since US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the killing of Christians in Nigeria by radical Islamists.

Nigeria is still reeling from the abduction of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram jihadists in Chibok in northeastern Borno state more than a decade ago. Some of these girls are still missing.