Security forces in northwest Nigeria are stepping up efforts to locate the 25 schoolgirls taken by armed men during an early morning raid on their school this week.
Police said gunmen carrying rifles stormed Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga town, Kebbi State, at approximately 4am local time, arriving on motorcycles in what appeared to be a carefully planned attack.
The attackers exchanged fire with police before scaling the perimeter fence and taking the students. The assailants killed the school’s vice principal during the incident.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the abduction and the motive remains unclear.
On Tuesday, security teams searched nearby forests where criminal gangs often hide, while additional personnel were deployed along major roads leading to the school.
Kebbi Governor Nasir Idris visited the school on Monday and pledged that every effort would be made to bring the girls home safely. Nigeria’s chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, met with soldiers shortly after the attack and ordered “intelligence driven operations and relentless day and night pursuit of the abductors,” according to an army statement.
“We must find these children. Act decisively and professionally on all intelligence. Success is not optional,” Shaibu told troops during his visit. He urged them to “leave no stone unturned” in the search.
Monday’s raid is the second mass abduction from a school in Kebbi in four years. In June 2021, bandits seized more than 100 students and staff from a government college. Those taken were released in batches across two years, often after parents raised ransom payments. Some students were forcibly married and returned with babies.
Across Nigeria, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped since Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from their school in Chibok on 14 April 2014.
In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending over two weeks in captivity in Kaduna State.
Kebbi State police told AFP on Tuesday that the abducted schoolchildren were all Muslim. However, supporters of US President Donald Trump have used the tragedy to bolster claims that Christians are being targeted in Nigeria.
“While we do not yet have all the details on this horrific attack, we know it occurred in a Christian enclave in Northern Nigeria,” Republican Representative Riley Moore wrote on X.
Trump has threatened to invade Nigeria “guns a blazing” over what right wing US lawmakers describe as a “Christian genocide”.
Nigeria has rejected the US president’s claims, saying the country’s security crises have resulted in more Muslim deaths.
