Abduction of fifteen students by armed men at school

At least fifteen students have been abducted by armed men from an Islamic school in Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, according to local sources. The abduction took place on Saturday March 9, at 1 am (2 am in Paris) in Gidan Bakuso village, just days after 280 children were abducted on the outskirts of their establishment in Kaduna state on Thursday.

“The gunmen were passing near the institution with a woman whom they had abducted from another part of the city. The students were woken up by his shouts.”, school director Lyman Abubakar told Agence France-Presse. then, “The bandits grabbed fifteen students between the ages of 8 and 14 and took them away with the woman”he added.

Kabiru Dauda, ​​a Sokoto State Member of Parliament and a native of the region, confirmed the abduction: “I received a call early this morning from my constituency indicating that bandits have abducted fifteen students from the school. »

Violence out of control

Kidnapping incidents are on the rise in the North West of the country. Victims are usually released after their relatives pay the ransom, while those whose families cannot pay are killed by their captors and their bodies left in the forest.

In recent years, criminal gangs have repeatedly attacked schools, mainly in rural areas of the northern states of Nigeria. Informal Islamic schools are widespread in northern Nigeria, which is predominantly Muslim, and where students mainly live on alms and odd jobs.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power in 2023, promising to tackle insecurity, fueled by jihadist groups, bandits in the northeast and increased inter-communal violence in the central states. According to some residents, the violence is out of control.