Twenty-four Nigerian schoolgirls released over a week after abduction
A group of 24 Nigerian girls who were kidnapped from their boarding school a week ago have been released, the country’s president said.
Armed attackers stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School (GGCSS) in Kebbi State, Nigeria, on November 17, killing one staff member and abducting 25 students. One managed to escape a short time later.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu praised security forces for their “swift response” to the incident, but the circumstances of the girls’ release remained unclear.
Africa’s most populous country has suffered a spate of kidnappings in recent years; More than 250 children kidnapped from a Catholic school last Friday are still missing.
A special advisor to the President confirmed in a statement that all girls taken from school in Kebbi State had been accounted for, noting that the incident had triggered copycat kidnappings in two other Nigerian states.
Tinubu said more personnel would be deployed to “sensitive areas to prevent further kidnappings.”
In a separate post on X, Tinubu wrote: “The Air Force will maintain continuous surveillance over the most remote areas, synchronizing operations with ground units to effectively identify, isolate, disrupt and neutralize all hostile elements.”
More than 1,500 children have been abducted from Nigerian schools since 2014, when 276 girls were abducted during the infamous Chibok mass kidnapping incident.
At least 300 children and staff were abducted from St Mary’s School, a Catholic boarding school in Nigeria’s Niger state, on Friday.
According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, fifty of those kidnapped from the school escaped, but at least 250 remain unaccounted for.
The leading Catholic cleric in the region told the BBC that the Nigerian government had “made no meaningful effort” to rescue those still missing.
The school abduction was the third in a week in Nigeria and President Bola Tinubu was forced to cancel his weekend trip to the G20 summit in South Africa to deal with the crisis.
UN education envoy Gordon Brown has called on the international community to “do all we can” to support efforts to return kidnapped children.
Former British prime minister Brown said: “It is also our duty to ensure that Nigerian schools are safe spaces for learning, not places where children can be removed from their classrooms for criminal profit.”
