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Police said the gunmen frantically attacked Bethel Baptist High School in southern Kaduna State overnight.
After armed men attacked a boarding school in Kaduna State, Nigeria on Monday, about 140 students were missing. The police said they were in hot pursuit with military personnel.
The attack was the 10th large-scale school kidnapping in northwestern Nigeria since December last year, and the authorities blamed it on armed bandits seeking ransom.
Police said the gunmen frantically attacked Bethel Baptist High School in southern Kaduna State overnight.
The police statement said: “They… subdued the school’s security and broke into the student dormitory, where they kidnapped an unknown number of students into the forest,” adding that 26 people, including a female teacher, had been rescued.
Pastor John Hayab, the founder of the school, told Reuters that about 25 students managed to escape.
According to Hayab (Hayab’s 17-year-old son ran away) and her parents Hassana Markus, about 180 students are enrolled in the school and are taking exams.
Local residents, who did not want to be named, said that the attack took place between 11pm on Sunday and 4am on Monday, and security officials blocked the school.
“The kidnappers took away 140 students and only 25 escaped. We still don’t know where the students were taken,” Emmanuel Paul, a teacher at the school, told AFP.
Kaduna State Police spokesman Mohamed Jalig confirmed the attack, but could not provide detailed information on the number of students taken away.
“The tactical police team hunts down the kidnappers,” he said. “We are still performing rescue missions.”
political issues
The local armed men known as bandits created an industry in northwestern Nigeria that kidnapped students for ransom. Kaduna State has been hit particularly hard. Since December last year, they have taken nearly 1,000 people from the school, and more than 150 of them are still unaccounted for.
The kidnappers also targeted roads, private residents and even hospitals. In the early hours of Sunday morning, gunmen kidnapped six people from a hospital in northern Kaduna State, including a one-year-old child.
The school kidnappings in Nigeria were originally carried out by armed groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State’s West Africa Province, but this tactic has now been adopted by other gunmen.
In February of this year, President Mohamedu Buhari urged the state government to “review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles,” and warned that such a move could lead to catastrophic boomerangs.
The riots have become a political issue for Buhari, a retired general and former military ruler, who has faced increasing criticism for major attacks by the gang.
The most high-profile school kidnapping incident was Boko Haram’s abduction of more than 270 female students from the town of Chibok in 2014. About 100 of them are still missing.
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