Gunmen Abduct Hundreds of Children from Nigerian School
Gunmen abducted 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from a Catholic boarding school in a western region of Nigeria on 21 November.
Fifty of the children escaped during the weekend, and a major military-led search and rescue operation is underway for the remaining kidnapping victims, the BBC reported.
The attack and abductions took place at St. Mary’s School in Agwara, part of Niger State, Nigeria, between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m., when most students—girls and boys primarily aged between 10 and 18 years—were asleep in their hostels. The gunmen invaded on motorcycles and pick-up trucks, broke into the hostels, and forcibly removed children before escaping into remote terrain. A security guard was shot and seriously injured during the raid, according to Premium Times.
Local residents told reporters that there were only local security arrangements and no official police or government forces securing the school at the time of the attack, despite prior government intelligence warnings about heightened threats.
A few days prior to the St. Mary’s School attack, gunmen attacked a high school and abducted 25 schoolgirls in the neighboring Kebbi state. In a separate attack on 17 November, gunmen attacked a church in Kwara state, killing two people and abducting 38 worshippers. The kidnappers are demanding a ransom of 100 million naira ($69,000) for each person, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but analysts say gangs often target schools, travelers, and remote villages in kidnappings for ransom, said the AP. While Christians are among those targeted, most of the victims of armed groups are Muslims in Nigeria’s northern regions.
Nigeria criminalized ransom payments in 2022 to try to cut off money to these criminal gangs, but the effort has had little effect, the BBC reported.
The Nigerian government is taking action in response to the events. President Bola Tinubu canceled his trip to the Group of 20 summit in South Africa to respond to the kidnappings. A group of elite government schools—federal unity colleges—located primarily in conflict-battered northern states were also closed, according to a circular from Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education. All other schools in the area around St. Mary’s have been ordered to close.
Police in VIP protection services have been redeployed to focus on core duties, especially in remote areas prone to attacks, the BBC reported. More than a quarter of Nigeria’s 371,000 police were assigned to VIP and politician protection duties, rather than tasks serving the general population, according to a report published earlier this month by the European Union Agency for Asylum.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said in a social media post that schools should be “sanctuaries for education, not targets…We must protect schools and hold perpetrators accountable.”
In April 2024, UNICEF marked 10 years since the mass abductions of Chibok schoolgirls in northeast Nigeria; the organization called for intensified efforts to protect children across Nigeria from abduction. UNICEF released its Minimum Standards for Safe Schools (MSSS) Monitoring Report, which found that only 37 percent of schools across 10 states have early warning systems in place to identify threats, such as school attacks.
The MSSS has six result areas: strong school systems, violence against children, natural hazards, conflict, everyday hazards, and safe school infrastructure. Each area includes a number of additional standards to meet, such as staff training for conflict-related crises and natural hazards; conducting activities to prevent violence against children at home, school, or on their way to school; disaster management activities and training; and following procedures to secure the school premises as needed, especially during periods of conflict.
UNICEF monitored the implementation of those standards across nearly 6,000 schools in Nigeria in 2023, and found that only nine out of 21 standards were substantially met, with an overall achievement rate of 42 percent.
In addition to the improvement of facility accessibility and improving nutrition, “…the development of early warning systems and the fortification of violence prevention measures en route to and from school demand attention,” the report said.
