ZCZC
BFF-34
NIGERIA-UNREST-SCHOOL-KIDNAP
Gunmen kidnap pupils in Nigeria’s restive nortwest
KANO, Nigeria, March 15, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Gunmen on Monday seized an
unspecified number of primary school pupils and teachers in the northwestern
Nigerian state of Kaduna, the government said, in a region wracked by
banditry and kidnapping.
The raid is the latest in a string of attacks on schools in Nigeria,
coming just four days after 39 college students were kidnapped by a gang.
Kaduna’s home affairs commissioner, Samuel Aruwan, said the government had
received security reports that “some pupils and teachers” had been abducted
at the LEA Primary School in Rema, in the Birnin Gwari area.
The authorities are “currently obtaining details on the actual number of
pupils and teachers reported to have been kidnapped,” he said in a statement.
The total number of children enrolled at the school was not immediately
known. Most primary pupils in Nigeria are aged between six and 11.
Gangs in northwest and central Nigeria, who are known locally as bandits,
have recently turned their focus to mass kidnappings, seizing school students
for ransom. At least four mass kidnappings have occurred since December.
Gunmen abducted 39 students late Thursday from hostels on the outskirts of
Kaduna city, the state capital.
On Monday, the authorities shut down their college and sent home 180 other
students and staff who had been rescued.
“Yesterday, under the cover of the military, we brought all the students
back to the school so they could pick all their personal belongings before we
handed them over to their parents,” Abubakar Hassan, head of Kaduna’s State
Emergency Agency (SEMA), told AFP.
“Parents have been asking these students to be released to them and they
would have been released earlier but we needed to manage their trauma and get
them to a certain level of comfort,” he added.
At the weekend, security forces thwarted a gang that had stormed a
secondary school in Ikara, Aruwan said on Sunday.
BSS/AFP/RY/20:22hrs