Study the articles below and answer the questions included within it. This articles has been sourced from the BBC and The Hindu respectively.
Teacher killed and 25 girls abducted in gunbattle at Nigerian school
This is the first major mass school abduction in Nigeria for more than a year
Armed men have killed a teacher and abducted at least 25 students in an attack on a girls’ secondary school in north-western Nigeria, police say.
The gang invaded the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, at around 04:00 local time (0300 GMT) on Monday, they said.
The attackers “engaged police personnel on duty in a gun duel” before scaling the perimeter fence and seizing the students from their hostel, a statement said.
One member of staff was killed while trying to protect the students. A second sustained gunshot wounds and is now receiving treatment.
Eyewitnesses described a large group of attackers, known locally as bandits, who arrived firing sporadically to cause panic.
Residents told the BBC that the gunmen subsequently marched a number of girls into nearby bushland.
The police said they had deployed “additional police tactical units, alongside military personnel and vigilante groups” to the area.
A coordinated search and rescue operation is underway in surrounding forests and suspected escape routes.
Over the past decade, schools in northern Nigeria have become frequent targets for armed groups, who often carry out abductions to seek ransom payments or leverage deals with the government.
As well as trying to crack down on the kidnappers, Nigeria has also banned the payment of ransoms in an attempt to make it less lucrative.
This is the first major school abduction since March 2024, when more than 200 pupils were seized from a school in Kuriga, Kaduna state.
The attack in Kebbi State highlights the persistent security crisis plaguing the region, leaving families in Maga in a state of fearful exhaustion as they wait and hope for their daughters’ safe return. (Sourced from the BBC)
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Gunmen abduct 25 girls from school in Nigeria
This is the second mass school abduction in Kebbi after the June 2021 incident when bandits took more than 100 students.
Lagos
Gunmen from a criminal gang kidnapped 25 people and killed a staff member in an early morning raid on a northwestern Nigerian girls’ secondary school on Monday, police said.
The attack comes more than a decade after 276 girls were abducted from Chibok in the restive northeastern Borno state and sparked international outcry that rallied people around the “#BringBackOurGirls” global social media campaign.
Since then, there has been a string of other abductions involving school children across northern parts of Nigeria.
Police on Monday said the gang armed with “sophisticated weapons, shooting sporadically, stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School” in Kebbi.
Police were deployed but “unfortunately, the suspected bandits had already scaled through the fence of the school and abducted twenty-five students from their hostel to unknown destination,” police said in a statement.
The school deputy head was shot dead while a security guard was injured during the attack, according to a report prepared for the United Nations.
The military, police tactical units and local vigilantes have “been deployed in the area and they are currently combing the bandits’ routes and nearby forest” in a bid to rescue the abducted students and arrest the gangs, police said. This is the second mass school abduction in Kebbi in four years, following the June 2021 incident when bandits took more than 100 students and staff members from a government college.
The students were released in batches over two years after parents raised ransom. Some of the students were forcefully married off and returned with babies.
Kidnapping crisis
Nigeria’s northwest has for years been seeing a rise in heavily armed criminal gangs known as “bandits” who steal cattle, raid villages, kidnap and kill residents and loot and burn homes. It has become the region most affected by kidnappings.
Africa’s most populous country has also been plagued by armed violence since the 2009 emergence of the Boko Haram group in the Lake Chad basin, in the northeast of the country. (Sourced from The Hindu)