The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has reported that 303 students and 12 teachers They were kidnapped in the early hours of Friday in western Nigeria following the attack carried out by more than 60 armed individuals on St. Mary’s Catholic school, in Niger state. The president of the CAN chapter for Niger State, Rev. Paul Daua Yohannasaid they had counted 227 missing but after verification, “we discovered that another 88 students had been captured after trying to escape.”
“It caught our attention that some parents, whose children we believed had escaped the attack, also came to ask about their children. We were curious, and that’s when we took a census and We discovered that they had been kidnapped,” has explained. “This It means that there are already 303 students (boys and girls), including 12 teachers (four women and eight men), which brings the total number of people kidnapped to 315,” the statement indicated. The school included a total of 629 students: 430 in primary school and 199 in secondary school.
According to Channels TV sources, the assault was carried out by armed men who arrived at the scene on 60 motorcycles and a van. There is evidence of a serious injury, the school janitor, who was shot several times at the beginning of the attack. No group has claimed responsibility for what happened but the security forces do not rule out that it is a group commonly known in the country as “bandits”: criminal organizations characterized by their extreme violence and that base their finances on the kidnapping of the civilian population.
The boarding school is a private Catholic institution that provides education and accommodation for adolescents between 12 and 17 years olds. In a statement sent to EFE and other media, the spokesman for the Niger Police, Wasiu Abiodun, indicated that “tactical units of the police, military personnel and other security agencies have been deployed to the site, searching the forested area in order to rescue the students.”
The Deputy Secretary General of the UN, Amina Mohammedhas repudiated the kidnapping and stated that the country’s schools (of which she was once Minister of the Environment) should be “sanctuaries for education, and not objectives.” “We must protect schools and hold perpetrators accountable,” he said.
The main UN official in the country, the humanitarian coordinator Mohamed Fall has denounced this abduction as “heartbreaking” and especially regretted that it occurred just days after another abduction of 25 students in the state of Kebbi, in the northwest of the country.
In one week there have been two kidnappings. The American president, Donald Trumphas threatened military intervention over an alleged campaign of jihadist violence against Christians, after the Christ Apostolic Church in Eruku was also attacked, where at least two people died and some 38 parishioners, including the pastor, were kidnapped last Wednesday when armed individuals entered the premises during mass.
Some states in Nigeria, especially in the center and northwest of the country, suffer constant attacks by bandits, a term used to name criminal gangs that commit mass assaults and kidnappings for ransom, which authorities sometimes label as “terrorists.”
The authorities from the neighboring states of Katsina and Plateau They ordered the closure of all schools as a precautionary measure. The Niger State government also ordered the closure of many educational centers.
More than a decade ago, Boko Haram jihadists kidnapped nearly 300 girls in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria. The wounds from that event remain open and some of those girls remain missing.
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