Security fears rise in Nigeria after more than 300 schoolchildren kidnapped | Nigeria

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 grew in Africa’s most populous country.

The raid on St Mary’s co-educational school in Nigeria’s western Niger state early on Friday came after gunmen attacked a secondary school in neighboring Kebbi state on Monday and abducted 25 girls.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had previously reported that 227 people were captured, but the new number came “following a verification exercise” that concluded 303 students and 12 teachers were kidnapped.

The number of boys and girls aged between eight and 18 abducted from St Mary’s is almost half of the school’s 629 student population.

The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of students and teachers kidnapped.

Mohammed Umar Bago, governor of Niger state, said on Saturday that the intelligence agency and police were “conducting a head count”.

Bago, whose government ordered the closure of some schools, also announced the closure of all schools in his state as attention focused on saving students and teachers. All schools in surrounding states were closed as a precaution.

Additionally, the Ministry of National Education ordered the closure of 47 boarding secondary schools across the country.

President Bola Tinubu canceled international talks, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to manage the crisis.

The two kidnapping operations and attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed and dozens abducted, came as US president Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the killing of Christians in Nigeria by radical Islamists.

U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth called on the government “to take both immediate and permanent steps to stop violence against Christians” in a call with Nigerian national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu, the Pentagon said on Friday.

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.

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 a serious bang, explosion at different gates of the compound”.

“The children were crying,” he said, describing the panic he experienced while searching for the key to the section where the crying was loudest. A security guard was heard groaning and after a while he heard the gang walking away.

The local Catholic diocese said “the attackers advanced aggressively and continuously through the dormitories for approximately three hours.”

Meanwhile, about 600km away, on the outskirts of Abuja, 40-year-old nurse Stella Shaibu picked up her daughter from a school in Bwari on Saturday following orders to close some boarding schools.

“How can we admit 300 students at the same time?” he asked, concluding that “the government has done nothing to prevent insecurity.”

“If there is anything the American government can do to salvage this situation, I fully support it,” he told AFP.

In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during a service broadcast online. Dozens of worshipers are believed to have been kidnapped.

For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have been killing thousands of people and carrying out kidnappings for ransom in rural areas of northwestern and central Nigeria, where there is little state presence.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but gangs of ransom-seeking bandits often target schools in rural areas where security is weak.

The gangs have camps in a vast forest that connects many western states.

Although the bandits have no ideological leanings and act for material gain, their growing alliances with jihadists in the northeast remain a cause for concern for authorities and security analysts.