According to a teacher and villagers, gunmen allegedly kidnapped over 200 children from a school in the northwest Kaduna state of Nigeria in one of the biggest mass kidnappings the country has seen in the last three years.
According to Sani Abdullahi, the esteemed head teacher of GSS Kuriga school situated in the Chikun district of Kaduna, the assailants, commonly referred to as bandits by the local population, commenced firing in the early hours of Thursday.
He informed the local authorities that 187 pupils from the main school and 100 students from the primary courses had been abducted.
There have been numerous instances of mass abductions involving schoolchildren and college students within the northwest and central regions of the country, particularly in Kaduna, over the course of the past three years.
There have been hundreds of mass kidnappings of schoolchildren and college students in the country's northwest and central regions, especially Kaduna, within the past three years.
Most were released in exchange for ransom after being imprisoned for weeks or months in camps hidden in jungles that crossed northwest states.
Locals claim that the gunmen broke into the Kuriga town government-owned school just before classes started at around eight in the morning.
While acknowledging the occurrence, state officials said they were still figuring out how many children had been abducted. Once individuals who flee an attack return home, the number of those reported missing or abducted is often reduced.
"At present, we have been unable to ascertain the exact number of children or students who have been victims of kidnapping," declared Uba Sani, the Governor of Kaduna State, during a visit to Kuriga on Thursday.
We are sure that each and every child will return. He informed the local villagers, "We are cooperating with the security services," while they were approximately ninety kilometres away from the state capital.
Nearly ten years have passed since Boko Haram insurgents stunned the world by kidnapping over 250 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria. This Thursday's abduction happened on that same day.
"The organization for human rights declared on X, formerly known as Twitter, that schools must serve as secure environments, and it is unacceptable for any child to be placed in a situation where they must decide between their education and their life."
Nigeria's armed forces are fighting on several fronts, including the Islamist insurgency that has been going on for a long time in the northeast and armed criminals in the northwest.
More than 100 individuals were reported as missing after a significant act of terrorism involving the abduction of women and children in a camp designated for those who have been displaced by the ongoing conflict in the northeastern region.
In September of last year, gunmen raided a university in northwest Zamfara State, kidnapping over thirty people, including twenty-four female students.
In February 2021, bandits attacked a girls' boarding school in the Zamfara town of Jangebe, kidnapping about 300 students.
According to local risk analysts at SBM Intelligence, a total of 3,620 individuals were abducted in 582 incidents related to kidnappings that transpired in Nigeria during the period spanning from July 2022 to June 2023.