KANO, Nigeria, March  8, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Nigeria's President Bola Ahmed
Tinubu on Friday sent troops to rescue more than 250 pupils kidnapped by gunmen
from a school in the country's northwest in one of the largest mass abductions
in three years.

The Kaduna state attack was the second mass kidnapping in a week in
Africa's most populous state, where heavily armed criminal gangs on motorbikes
target victims in villages and schools and along highways in the hunt for
ransom payments.

Local government officials in Kaduna State confirmed the kidnapping attack
on Kuriga school on Thursday, but they have still not given figures as they
said they were still working out how many children had been abducted.

At least one person was shot dead during the attack, local residents said.

Sani Abdullahi, a teacher at the GSS Kuriga school in Chikun district, said
staff managed to escape with many students when the gunmen known locally as
bandits attacked early Thursday firing in the air.

He told local officials 187 pupils had been snatched from the main junior
school along with another 100 from the primary classes. Three local residents
also said between 200 and 280 children and teachers had been snatched.

"Early in the morning... we heard gunshots from bandits, before we knew it
they had gathered up the children," local resident Musa Mohammed told AFP.

"We are pleading to the government, all of us are pleading, they should
please help us with security."

The Kaduna abduction and the mass kidnapping a week ago from camps for
people displaced by jihadists in northeast Borno state illustrate the challenge
facing Tinubu who promised to make Nigeria safer and bring in more foreign
investment.

"I have received briefing from security chiefs on the two incidents, and I
am confident that the victims will be rescued," Tinubu said in a statement
ordering armed forces to track down the kidnappers.

"Nothing else is acceptable to me and the waiting family members of these
abducted citizens. Justice will be decisively administered."

The two mass kidnappings also came almost ten years after Boko Haram
jihadists triggered huge international outcry in April 2014 by kidnapping more
than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno state.

Some of those girls are still missing.

More than 100 people are reported missing after militants carried out the
mass kidnapping last week targeting women and children in camps for those
displaced by the jihadist conflict in Borno. But conflicting accounts have
emerged about the time and number of victims.

- 'No stone unturned' -

Police did not provide figures for the Kuriga school kidnapping. But the
numbers of those reported abducted in Nigeria are often lowered after people
who went missing while fleeing attacks return home.

"The Kaduna State Government and Security Agencies are working round the
clock to ensure the safe return of the school children," state governor Uba
Sani said on X, formerly Twitter.

"I have received strong assurances from the President and National Security
Adviser that no stone will be left unturned to bring back the children."

In the last three years, hundreds of schoolchildren and college students
have been kidnapped in mass abductions in the northwest and central region,
including in Kaduna.

Almost all were released for ransom payments after weeks or months spent in
captivity at bandit camps hidden in the forests that stretch across
northwestern states.

UN child welfare agency UNICEF also condemned Thursday's attack and called
on the government to do more to protect students.

"Schools are supposed to be sanctuaries of learning and growth, not sites
of fear and violence," UNICEF Nigeria director Christian Munduate said in a
statement.

Nigeria's armed forces are battling on several fronts, including against
armed criminals in the northwest and the long-running jihadist insurgency in
the northeast that has killed 40,000 and displaced more than two million since
2009.

Fighting in Borno has eased as militants have been pushed back from the
territory they once controlled, but they still carry out attacks, kidnapping
and raids in remote areas.

Last September, gunmen abducted more than 30 people, including 24 female
students, in a raid around a university in northwest Zamfara State.

In February 2021, bandits raided a girls' boarding school in the town of
Jangebe in Zamfara, kidnapping around 300 students. Months earlier, gunmen
snatched more than 300 students from a boys school in Kankara in Katsina state
before releasing them days later.

Between July 2022 and June 2023, 3,620 people were abducted in 582
kidnap-related incidents in Nigeria, according to local risk analysts SBM
Intelligence. It has recorded 4,777 people abducted since Tinubu took office in
May last year.