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Gunmen kidnap 300 students in northwest Nigeria. Two days later, some have lost hope of finding them


Rashidat Hamza is in depression. All however certainly one of her six kids are a number of the just about 300 scholars kidnapped from their faculty in Nigeria’s northwest, riddled with Islamic extremists and armed gangs.

It’s been greater than two days then her kids — ages 7 to 18 — went to university within the far flung the city of Kuriga in Kaduna condition handiest to be abducted via gunmen. She used to be nonetheless in trauma on March 9.

Government stated a minimum of 100 kids elderly 12 or more youthful had been a number of the abductees within the condition identified for violent killings lawlessness and perilous roads the place crowd get frequently snatched.


Additionally learn: At least 200 people, mostly women and children, abducted by extremists in northeastern Nigeria

“We don’t know what to do, but we believe in God,” Ms. Hamza advised The Related Press all the way through a talk over with to the city.

Collection kidnappings in Nigeria

The accumulation kidnapping in Kuriga used to be the 3rd in northern Nigeria since endmost age; a gaggle of gunmen kidnapped 15 kids from a college in every other northwestern condition, Sokoto, earlier than first light on March 9, and a couple of days previous 200 crowd, most commonly ladies and kids displaced via struggle, had been abducted in northeastern Borno Order.

The kidnappings are a stark reminder of the protection catastrophe plaguing Africa’s maximum populous nation.

Parents wait for news about the kidnapped LEA Primary and Secondary School Kuriga students in Kuriga, Kaduna state, Nigeria, Saturday, March 9, 2024.

Oldsters look forward to information in regards to the abducted LEA Number one and Secondary College Kuriga scholars in Kuriga, Kaduna condition, Nigeria, Saturday, March 9, 2024.
| Photograph Credit score:
AP

Refuse workforce claimed accountability for any of the new abductions. On the other hand, Islamic extremists waging an insurgency within the northeast are suspected of wearing out the abduction in Borno. Locals blame the varsity abductions on herders who’re in struggle with the settled communities.

It’s no longer the primary age for a pupil kidnapping in Nigeria to trauma the arena. In 2014, Islamic extremists kidnapped greater than 200 schoolgirls from Borno’s Chibok, sparking the worldwide #BringBackOurGirls social media marketing campaign.


Additionally learn: Boko Haram abduction of Chibok girls: A photo essay

A decade after, a minimum of 1,400 Nigerian scholars have thus far been kidnapped from their faculties in matching cases. Some are nonetheless held captive, together with just about 100 of the Chibok women.

Recalling Thursday’s kidnapping, Nura Ahmad, a schoolmaster, advised the AP that scholars had been simply settling into their study rooms on the govt number one and secondary faculty when gunmen “came in dozens, riding on bikes and shooting sporadically.”

The LEA Number one and Secondary College, one of the vital few instructional amenities on this department, sits via the street simply on the front of the city, tucked in the midst of woodlands and savannah. Even with its decaying roof and wrecked partitions, it gave folks hope for a greater past for his or her kids.

“They surrounded the school and blocked all passages … and roads” to oppose aid from coming earlier than kidnapping the youngsters in not up to 5 mins, Ahmad stated.

Fourteen-year-old Abdullahi Usman braved gunshots to leaving the captors. “Those who refused to move fast were either forced on the motorcycles or threatened by gunshots fired into the air,” he stated. “The bandits were shouting: Go! Go! Go!” he stated.

Nigerian police and infantrymen headed into the woodlands on Friday to seek for the lacking kids, however combing the wooded expanses of northwestern Nigeria may just hurry weeks, witnesses stated.

“Since this happened, my brain has been muddled,” stated Shehu Lawal, the daddy of a 13-year-old boy who’s amongst the ones kidnapped. “My child didn’t even eat breakfast before leaving. His mother fainted (upon hearing the news),” he said.

Some villagers like Lawan Yaro, whose five grandchildren are among the abducted, say their hopes are already fading.

People are used to the region’s insecurity, “but it has never been in this manner,” he stated. “We are crying, looking for help from the government and God, but it is the gunmen that will decide to bring the children back,” he stated. “God will aid us.”

But schools are not the only targets. More than 3,500 people have been abducted across Nigeria in the last year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Some were even kidnapped from their homes in the capital of Abuja.

Fighting armed gangs

Last year, President Bola Tinubu took office after he successfully campaigned on the promise to tighten security and stop the kidnappings.

Experts say it is easy to smuggle in arms, used in kidnappings, over Nigeria’s poorly policed borders. More than half of its 1,500 km border with Niger, for instance, stretches across the northwest. Though mostly covered in woodland savannah, the region also has vast ungoverned and unoccupied forests where organised gangs hide and keep their kidnap victims.

In 2022, lawmakers passed a bill to penalize ransom payments, but Nigerian kidnappers are known for their brutality, forcing many families to succumb to their demands.

Nigeria’s military continues to conduct air raids and special military operations in the region as well as respond to pockets of crisis across the country but is fatigued by the 14-year Islamist insurgency in the northeast. Armed gangs also keep on multiplying in the region where many are poor and often work with extremists, seeking to expand their operations.

The military previously said that sometimes kidnap victims were used as “human shields” to prevent aerial bombardments of the forests where their captors hide.

The gangs are “adapting their strategies and further entrenching themselves in the northwest through extortion,” said James Barnett, a researcher specialising in West Africa at the U.S.-based Hudson Institute.

“Their mentality is that they should be allowed free rein to do what they please in the northwest and that if the state challenges them, directly or indirectly, they will have to respond and show their strength,” Mr. Barnett said.

More than a dozen checkpoints and military trucks now dot the dangerous 89 km road running from Kuriga town to the city of Kaduna. But the soldiers are likely to be redeployed elsewhere soon, depending on security needs.

People in Kuriga can only hope their children are returned unharmed and the safety they now feel with the presence of military personnel endures.

Hamza, the mother whose five children were kidnapped, hopes the government will arrest the kidnappers and return the students. “The gunmen don’t allow us to have peace.”



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