Trendpills
A female student has escaped from captivity after armed men abducted 25 pupils from a government boarding school in Nigeria’s north-central Niger state. The attack occurred in the early hours of Monday morning at the Government Secondary School in the remote village of Tungan Magajiya, when gunmen overwhelmed the school’s security guards and stormed the hostels.
Authorities have confirmed that one of the abducted girls managed to flee and has since returned home safely. Security forces, including the military and police, have launched a large-scale search and rescue operation in the surrounding forests to locate the remaining 24 students. The governor of Niger state, Mohammed Umar Bago, condemned the attack and stated that no effort would be spared to ensure the safe return of the children.
This incident is the latest in a recurring nightmare of mass school kidnappings that has plagued Nigeria for over a decade. The crisis gained global attention in 2014 with the Boko Haram abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. While initially driven by extremist ideology, these attacks have largely evolved into a lucrative criminal enterprise. Armed gangs, locally referred to as bandits, frequently target schools, villages, and highways in Nigeria's northwestern and central regions to demand hefty ransoms from families and communities.
Since the Chibok kidnapping, it is estimated that over 1,680 students have been abducted across the country. According to an analysis by ENACT Africa, this shift from ideological to for-profit abductions has made schools a soft and valuable target for criminal groups. The government's response has often been criticized as inadequate, leaving rural communities vulnerable. The ongoing search for the missing girls highlights the persistent security challenges facing Africa's most populous nation, where the safety of students remains under constant threat from organized armed groups operating in the region.
