AL HAYAT - Gunmen seize 315 in latest Nigerian mass school kidnapping

The early Friday raid on St Mary's co-education school in Niger state in central Nigeria came after gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had earlier reported 227 people seized, but the new number came "after a verification exercise" following the early Friday mass kidnapping, and added that "The total number of victims abducted ... is now 303 students and 12 teachers".

The number of boys and girls kidnapped from St Mary's is almost half of the school's student population of 629.

The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of students and teachers abducted.

Niger state governor Mohammed Umar Bago told reporters on Saturday said the intelligence department and police were "doing the head count" and the figure would be released by the end of the day.

Bago, whose government had ordered some schools shut, also ordered the closure of all schools in his state, a day after authorities in the nearby states of Katsina and Plateau shuttered all theirs as a precautionary measure. The national education ministry has also ordered 47 boarding secondary schools across the country be shut.

President Bola Tinubu has cancelled international engagements, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to handle the crisis.

The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed, have happened since US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the killing of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called on Abuja to "take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians", on Friday during talks with Nigerian National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram jihadists at Chibok in northestern Borno state more than a decade ago. Some of those girls are still missing.

- Myriad security challenges -

CAN said Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, who is also the Catholic Bishop of Kontagora diocese under which the school falls, gave the update after visiting St Mary's.

"After we left the school at Papiri, we decided to make calls, do verification exercise and do further enquiries on those we had thought escaped successfully, only to discover that 88 more students were also captured after they tried to escape," he said.

"This now makes it 303 students (male and female) including 12 teachers (4 females and 8 males) bringing the total number of abducted persons to 315," he said in a statement.

For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have been intensifying attacks in rural areas of northwest and central Nigeria, where there is little state presence, killing thousands and conducting kidnappings for ransom.

No group has claimed the latest attacks but bandit gangs seeking ransom payments often target schools in rural areas where security is weak.

The gangs have camps in a vast forest straddling several states including Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi and Niger.

In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during a service that was being broadcast online. Dozens of worshippers are believed to have been abducted.

As Nigeria grapples with security challenges on several fronts, hostage-taking has spiralled nationwide and become a favoured tactic of bandit gangs and jihadists.

Although bandits have no ideological leanings and are motivated by financial gain, their increasing alliance with jihadists from the northeast has been a source of concern for authorities and security analysts.

Jihadists have for 16 years been waging an insurrection in the northeast with the aim of establishing a Caliphate.

T.Buraiki--al-Hayat