Armed forces have abducted 317 girls from a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, police said in a statement Friday, the latest in a large increase in high school abductions in Africa’s most populous nation, where abduction for ransom it has become a profitable industry.
Armed militants entered the government girls’ secondary school, Jangebe, in Zamfara state, around 1 a.m. Friday and packed the students in vehicles or drove them to nearby Rugu Forest, which spans three states and hundreds of mile. Until the morning, community leaders were still working to calculate the number of missing people.
Ahmad Abdullahi, a parent, said his daughter had escaped, but that five of her nieces, aged 14 to 17, were among the missing.
The news marks the second such abduction in just over a week in northwestern Nigeria, where an increase in armed militancy has led to a deterioration in security.
Dozens of schoolchildren and staff are still missing after being abducted from another school, the Kagara Government Scientific College in Niger on February 17. Government officials said they were negotiating with the kidnappers to bring the victims home.
An armored transporter is stationed at the Government Scientific College in Kagara, after the armed men abducted dozens of students and personnel.
Photo:
kola sulaimon / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
There were no immediate comments from the federal government and no liability claims. Analysts said the culprits were probably one of the heavily armed bandit groups, which had become increasingly powerful in areas of northwestern Nigeria and not jihadist groups in the northeast.
“Ransom kidnapping is now the most thriving industry in Nigeria,” said Bulama Bukarti, a terrorist analyst and columnist for the Daily Trust, Nigeria’s most popular newspaper in northern Nigeria.
Nigerian officials are divided between those who are in favor of dialogue with criminal groups that capture schoolchildren and those who are in favor of a zero tolerance approach.
More than 300 schoolchildren were received by Nigerian government officials after they were released by their captors. The Boko Haram jihadist group had claimed responsibility for their abduction. (Originally published December 18, 2020)
President Muhammadu Buhari has quietly dropped his claim that the country’s insurgencies are technically defeated and acknowledged that the nation is in a “state of emergency”. The country, which has one of the strongest armies in Africa and is a strong US ally against terrorism, is struggling to contain several threats: a 10-year jihadist rebellion and banditry and iniquity that have metastasized into a conflict of overlapping militant groups.
After months of criticism over rising insecurity in the country’s northern states, Mr Buhari reluctantly agreed to change his military chiefs in January.
Shehu Sani, a former senator who studied in the town of Kagara as a boy, said the groups targeted children because they offer the highest ransom payment.
“We are stuck in the most vicious cycle,” he said. “We need help to acquire new technologies to overcome this – and to find the children that these people have taken.”
Write to Joe Parkinson at [email protected]
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