- An armed gang kidnapped 25 schoolgirls in Kebbi state.
- One school employee was killed and another injured in the attack.
- The law prohibits the payment of ransom for kidnapped persons.
Gunmen from a criminal gang on Monday morning kidnapped 25 schoolgirls from a girls’ secondary school in northwestern Nigeria. One school employee was killed and another injured in the attack, the police reported. TASR writes about it according to an AFP report.
Police said an armed gang “invaded the building of the State High School for Girls” in Kebbi state at around 4:00 a.m. local time (5:00 a.m. CET). The authorities sent security forces to the scene, but “unfortunately, the suspected perpetrators had already climbed over the school fence and kidnapped twenty-five female students from the dormitory to an unknown location.” the police said in a statement.
The northwest of Nigeria has long been terrorized by criminal groups that steal cattle, raid villages, kidnap and kill residents, loot and burn housesy. This is the result of high levels of poverty, unemployment and widespread illegal firearms tradeAFP notes.
In 2014, dozens of criminals from the Islamist group Boko Haram invaded a boarding school in the Chibok area and kidnapped 276 schoolgirls aged 12–17. In 2022, the country adopted a law prohibiting the payment of ransom to kidnappers, but many families report that they have no other option to save their relatives.
