DAKAR, Senegal – Dozens of Nigerian schoolchildren were abducted by gunmen early Wednesday morning, becoming the latest victims of the West African country’s insecurity.
Armed men in military uniforms abducted at least 40 people, mostly students, from a boarding school in the city of Kagara, in the state of Niger, in the northwest of the country. They shot dead one student.
Some managed to escape.
“I am safe,” Ibrahim Ndanusa, 13, said in a call to his father after running away from his kidnappers. “But I suffered.”
Kidnapping has long been a problem in Nigeria and is getting worse in many parts of the country.
The most notorious mass abduction was that of the Chibok Girls by Boko Haram, in 2014. It was in the northeastern state of Borno, the center of the Islamic extremist group’s uprising against the state.
But Wednesday’s kidnapping took place in the northwest of the country and is the latest in a series of attacks carried out there by criminal gangs known locally as bandits. In December, more than 300 boys were taken from a school in the president’s home state, Katsina. Then, two days later, more than 80 Islamic schoolchildren in the same state were abducted and rescued almost immediately.
As the police are overloaded and the army has been deployed to almost every Nigerian state to fight the country’s many crises, security agencies are thin. Armed criminal gangs operate in much of the country, and the government is regularly criticized for its inability to keep its citizens safe.
In the last few years, the number of casualties abducted in each attack increased. Kidnappers have become more indiscriminate in their targets and have often kidnapped villagers who have little money to pay ransoms.
As in previous attacks, the gunmen in the attack arrived at Government Science College in Kagara, which has about 1,000 students, in the middle of the night on Wednesday.
In the chaos of the aftermath of the attack, the school initially struggled to determine how many people were taken, but according to local journalists, it eventually put 26 students along with three staff members and 12 of their family members.
One teacher at the school, Aliyu Isah, told The Associated Press that the gunmen entered the school grounds around 1:30 p.m. He said they forced him to lead them to the students’ dormitory, where he and some students were then tied up. a couple on.
“They told the students not to worry, that they were soldiers,” he told The AP.
“They gathered all the students outside, but some ran into the bushes,” he said. Isah said.
According to Mary Noel Berje, the press secretary of the governor, the kidnapping has been the latest in several attacks in the state of Niger over the past few days.
On Monday, a bus was hijacked and 21 people abducted.
According to local media, about 50 men on Tuesday attacked motorcycles with AK-47 rifles, according to 11 locals and 20 people abducted.
“These are things that happen everywhere,” she said. Berje said. ‘It’s not possible for any person, not even the governor, to have an idea of who the bandits are. They do not live in us, they live outside of us. We do not know where they came from. ”
President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the country’s security agencies to secure the release of the victims, and several ministers, the national security adviser and the inspector general of police flew to Minna, the capital of the state of Nigeria.
The governor has announced the closure of residences in the parts of the state most affected by banditry.
When schoolchildren were released after previous mass abductions, politicians sometimes took the opportunity to get the honor. After the 300 students in the Katsina kidnapping were freed, the boys had to wait until Mr. Buhari gave them a speech in front of television cameras before they could go home.
Usman Ndanusa’s 13-year-old son Ibrahim was among the boys abducted in Kagara on Wednesday. When he arrived at the school to look for his son, Mr. Ndanusa found a large crowd of people. While he was waiting to talk to the principal, his phone rang. His heart sank.
“I thought it was the kidnappers who wanted to talk to me,” he said. Ndanusa said.
But it was Ibrahim.
‘Dad! Dad! I’m safe, ‘he heard. Ndanusa his son says. “I escaped from the bandits who came to kidnap us.”
Then Mr. Ndanusa, his son burst into tears. He immediately went to fetch Ibrahim from the family that took him in after he escaped. When he got there, they gave him breakfast.
Ruth Maclean reports from Dakar, Senegal and Ismail Alfa from Maiduguri, Nigeria.