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Two dozen Nigerian girls who were abducted from their boarding school in the country’s northwest last week have been released, the presidency announced Tuesday.
A spate of schoolboy abductions in Nigeria has erupted since Islamist group Boko Haram abducted 276 girls in Chibok in the restive northeast in 2014, sparking international outrage.
A statement by Bio Onanuga, Special Adviser to the Nigerian President, on November 17 said, “President Bola Tinubu welcomes the release today of 24 schoolgirls abducted by terrorists in Maga.”
Authorities had said a gang armed with “sophisticated weapons and sporadic firing” attacked the school overnight, killing a school official and injuring a security guard.
Officials said the attackers had abducted 25 girls, but one managed to quickly escape.
Tuesday’s statement said that while commending the security agents, Tinubu urged them to “do more to rescue the remaining students still held captive”.
It said the KB attack spurred other “copycat hijackings” in the past week.
-Fresh Attacks-
Earlier on Tuesday, police said gunmen seized 10 women and children in an overnight raid in the western state of Kwara.
That raid targeted Isapa village, which neighbors another village where at least 35 people were abducted a week earlier.
Last week, armed gangs also seized more than 300 children from a Catholic school in Nigeria’s north-central Niger state and 13 girls in the eastern state of Borno.
Africa’s most populous country faces a long-running security crisis, fueled by jihadist attacks and the violence of “bandit” gangs who attack villages, murder people and kidnap for ransom.
US President Donald Trump earlier this month threatened military action over what he called a “mass genocide” of Nigerian Christians, which the Nigerian government denies.
Long-running conflicts in the religiously diverse country of 230 million people have killed both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.
Kwara state police commissioner Ojo Adekimi said the attackers in the latest raid were herdsmen who carried out “sporadic shooting” and captured women and children from local farming families.
“They are being searched for. Policemen are in the bushes with local hunters,” he told AFP.
One woman managed to escape and return to the village, he said.
The raid came a week after gunmen killed two people and abducted at least 35 worshipers in an attack on a church in Eruku, about 20 kilometers from Isapa.
The kidnapped worshipers have now returned home.
– ‘I want my baby back’ –
Parents of children abducted during a raid at a Catholic school have said they are desperate for their release.
At least 50 victims who were taken from St. Mary’s School managed to escape, but more than 265 children and teachers were still being held.
“My son is a little boy. He doesn’t even know how to talk,” Michael Ibrahim said.
He said, his four-year-old son is suffering from asthma.
“We don’t know what condition the boy is in,” Ibrahim said. He said his wife became so ill due to the kidnapping that she had to be taken to the hospital.
Some of the abducted children are of nursery-school age.
Another father, Sunday Isaiku, told AFP, “I want my child back. I want my child back. If I had the power to bring my child back, I would do it.”
Four days after the St. Mary’s children were taken, no group has claimed abduction or contacted the school to demand ransom.
– ‘Hateful attacks’ –
Global conflict monitoring group ACLED has recorded 42 incidents of violence targeting students in Nigeria this year, down from 71 in 2024.
About 40 percent of kidnappings involved a demand for ransom.
“We are shocked by the recent spate of mass kidnappings in north-central Nigeria,” UN rights office spokesman Thamin al-Khaitan told reporters in Geneva. He urged the Nigerian government to stop the “despicable attacks”.
Meanwhile the World Food Program warned that hunger is reaching unprecedented levels in northern Nigeria due to jihadist attacks and instability.
It said about 35 million people in the region would face “severe food insecurity” in 2026, with about 15,000 people in hard-hit Borno state facing “famine-like conditions.”
Bureau-SN/JHB/GIV/RLP
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
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