Armed bandits abducted nearly 150 students from a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria on Monday, the latest in a wave of mass abductions targeting schoolchildren and students, reported Reuters.
As per reports, some unidentified gunmen raided the Bethel Baptist High School in southern Kaduna state overnight.
“They … overpowered the school’s security guards and made their way into the student’s hostel where they abducted an unspecified number of students into the forest,” the police said in a statement.
The statement added that 26 people including a female teacher had been rescued. The exact number of students taken by the bandits has not yet been ascertained.
Reverend John Hayab, who is one of the founders of the school, told Reuters that about 25 students had managed to escape while the school’s other students remained missing. He said about 180 students attended the school and were in the process of sitting exams.
This is the fourth incident of kidnapping of school students in Kaduna State in the last six months. There have been seven mass kidnappings of students in Nigeria so far this year.
Nearly 1,000 students and pupils have been abducted in different states of Nigeria since December last year. Most of them have been released after negotiations with the government, while some are still in captivity.
Armed groups carry out the abductions and call for ransoms in exchange for releasing the abducted people. Many schools have been forced to close as authorities aren’t capable of providing adequate protection to the students and staff.
The cases of mass abductions from schools in Nigeria have increased significantly since 2014 when Boko Haram militants abducted 276 female students from a government school in Chibok in northeastern Borno State.
In February, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered state governments to review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles, warning that the policy might out to be disastrous.
