Officials report that around 280 Nigerian schoolchildren have been kidnapped in Kuriga, a town in the northwest.
Numerous armed individuals on motorbikes passed by the school as the students were in the assembly ground at approximately 08:30 (7:30 GMT), according to a witness.
They said that a teacher and the pupils, who ranged in age from eight to fifteen, were carried away.
In the past few years, kidnapping gangs, also referred to as bandits, have taken hundreds of lives, primarily in the northwest.
Up until last week, though, there has been a decline in the number of kidnappings in large numbers over the previous 12 months.
He said that 25 of the 187 pupils who had vanished from a nearby primary school and 125 from a high school had subsequently made a full recovery.
According to the eyewitness, one girl was shot by the gunmen and was being treated at the Birnin Gwari hospital.
Locals attempted to save the kids, but the shooters repelled them, killing one person, according to a teacher who was able to flee.
Two of Zakariyya Nasiru’s siblings were held captive, and she told the BBC that the family was having trouble falling asleep on Thursday night.We couldn’t stop thinking about them, so we couldn’t sleep. We’re hoping for their safe return from here. According to Mr. Nasiru, one boy managed to escape yesterday night and returned with terrifying tales.
It’s said that almost every household in the town has an abducted child.
An effort has been made by the armed forces to locate them. “No child will be left behind,” the governor declared.
A local school principal was assassinated by bandits in January, and his widow was taken captive.
Days prior, numerous women and children were reported abducted by the Islamist group Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria when they were gathering firewood.
It is not believed that the two mass abduction cases are connected.
Although there have been rumors that they occasionally collaborated, the violent Islamist group Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria is not affiliated with the criminal kidnapping gangs that terrorize that region.
The raid on Thursday took place in territory held by Ansaru, a Boko Haram offshoot group that abducted over 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014.
A contentious law that criminalizes ransom payments was passed in 2022 in an effort to stop Nigeria’s rapidly expanding and profitable kidnapping business. Although there is a minimum 15-year prison penalty associated with it, no one has ever been arrested.
The family of a group of sisters who were abducted in Abuja earlier this year rejected a police officer claim that the girls had been freed by security forces, claiming they were forced to pay the ransom.
Credit: BBC NEWS AFRICA
