Fifty of the 315 children kidnapped by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria’s Niger State on Friday have escaped. The Christian Association of Nigeria said they have been brought together with their families. A major military-led search and rescue operation is underway for the remaining 265 children and 12 teachers who were taken. Pope Leo XIV called for the release of those taken. He said he felt immense sadness and told the authorities to act quickly.
Schools Ordered to Close After Kidnappings
Schools in different parts of Nigeria were asked to close their doors after the incident of mass kidnapping in Niger by the authorities. A less significant kidnapping was announced in the local government of north-west Nigeria on Monday, after the news of the abduction of 20 students from a boarding school by unknown gunmen. The administration of various schools was brought to a halt in the local government areas of Niger, Kebbi, Katsina, Yobe and Kwara, as schools were ordered to be closed.
The escape of the kids was a nice surprise to the families. The whole nation has been anxious about the fate of hundreds of children going to school who have been kidnapped in the northwest of Nigeria. According to a Christian group working on the case, the pupils escaped between Friday and Saturday. What they did is being called a brave and risky attempt to run away from their captors. The students and teachers were taken from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger state. Earlier reports spoke of 303 students and 12 teachers being taken. Their number is more than the 276 taken during the infamous Chibok mass abduction of 2014.
Armed Men Stormed School in Early Morning
Local police say armed men came into St Mary’s at around 02:00. They took students staying there. Niger state governor Mohammed Umaru Bongo said on Saturday that all schools in the area would close. He warned that this was not a time for blame games. Dominic Adamu has daughters who go to the school but they were not taken. He said that everybody is weak. It took everybody by surprise.
One distraught woman spoke tearfully to the BBC. She said her nieces, aged six and 13, had been kidnapped. She added that she just wants them to come home. The military, police and local vigilantes are doing a search for the children. They are looking through nearby forests and remote routes believed to have been used by the gunmen.
School Ignored Order to Close Boarding Facilities
According to the government in Niger state, St Mary’s School was said to have disregarded a directive that boardings be closed following warnings from the intelligence about a heightened risk of attacks. The school itself has not responded to that statement. Kidnapping for ransom has become the most common way to create havoc in different areas of Nigeria, by criminal gangs, mostly referred to as bandits. The payment of ransoms is no longer allowed – as a means to stop the flow of money to the criminal gangs. However, it has produced very little results.
More than 20 schoolgirls from a boarding school in Kebbi state were kidnapped on Monday. The BBC has been informed that they are Muslim. The local authorities have banned the opening of secondary schools and colleges after this incident. An attack on a church followed the events in the south of Kwara state. Two people lost their lives and 38 others were taken.
Nigeria Says Claims Are Wrong
The Nigerian government has termed the allegations of being persecuted as a terrible distortion of the facts. An official stated that terrorists are enemies to everyone who resist their evil ideology. Therefore they do not differentiate between Muslims, Christians or people of no religion. In the north east, Islamist terrorist groups have been at war with the government for over ten years. Groups that monitor violence say most of the victims of these groups are Muslim.
This is because most of the attacks happen in the north of the country where the majority are Muslim. There are also deadly attacks between herders and farmers in the centre of Nigeria. The herders are mostly Muslim while farmers are largely Christian. However, people who study this say often these are about competition for resources. Things like water or land, these are the things causing the fighting rather than religion.
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