At least 15 students were abducted from a school in Gidan Bakuso village, Sokoto state, northwestern Nigeria, in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday, according to the school owner and a local resident.
This incident comes just days after a separate kidnapping of roughly 300 students in northern Kaduna state.
Gunmen stormed the school premises, firing sporadic shots that woke and panicked the students.
School owner Liman Abubakar Bakuso reported that the attackers managed to abduct 15 students, with ages ranging from 13 to 20. A woman was also reportedly taken during the raid.
“We are incredibly worried and praying for their safe return,” Bakuso told Reuters. Calls seeking comment from the Nigerian police were not answered.
School kidnappings were initially a tactic employed by the militant group Boko Haram, notorious for the abduction of over 200 girls from a school in Chibok, Borno state, a decade ago.
However, authorities now report that criminal gangs with no ideological affiliation have adopted the method to extort ransom payments.
Nigeria’s security forces are heavily engaged in fighting an insurgency in the northeast, leaving vast areas of the country with minimal police presence and vulnerable to armed gangs roaming freely.
Meanwhile, in Kaduna, the state governor informed the BBC that at least 28 of the abducted students from earlier this week managed to escape their captors.
This incident in Sokoto marks the first major school kidnapping in Nigeria since July 2021, when gunmen abducted approximately 150 students.
