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Nigerian army patrol near LEA Primary and Secondary School Kuriga where students were kidnapped in Kuriga, Kaduna, Nigeria Alamy Stock Photo

More than 250 students kidnapped last week in Nigeria still missing despite rescue efforts

Last Thursday, gunmen on motorbikes stormed a school in Kuriga and rounded up the pupils.

FAMILIES OF MORE than 250 Nigerian students kidnapped from a school last week are still waiting for news about their welfare and the progress in rescue efforts four days after the attack.

Last Thursday, gunmen on motorbikes stormed the school in Kuriga, northwestern Kaduna state, rounding up the pupils and forcing them into the bush before their panicked families.

It was one of the largest mass abductions carried out by criminal gangs known locally as bandits who target schools, villages and motorways in their hunt for victims to squeeze out ransom payments.

The Nigerian government said it has sent troops into the forests that carpet northwestern states to rescue the students who number about 280. However, little detail has emerged after the kidnapping.

Muhammad Kabir, a relation of several of the schoolchildren, said the families had not been briefed on what is being done to free them.

“From what we gathered, the children have been divided into groups by the captors and sent to different camps,” he told AFP in Kaduna city where he lives.

“We have been left in apprehension, we have no idea what the children are going through in the hands of their kidnappers.”

He said they feel time is running out, and called for the state and federal governments should act fast.

“Kuriga is a closely-knit community, we are one big family. So, everybody has been affected by this tragedy.”

children-walk-past-the-bush-paths-that-the-abducted-schoolchildren-of-the-lea-primary-and-secondary-school-followed-in-kuriga-kaduna-nigeria-saturday-march-9-2024-the-kidnapping-on-thursday-was-o Children walk past the bush paths that the abducted schoolchildren followed in Kuriga Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Resident Abdullahi Musa said little news had emerged in Kuriga after the government said troops were in the forests trying to locate the children.

“This was on Saturday and since then we have not heard anything,” Musa said. ”We are talking about more than 280 children.”

Nigeria’s military did not respond to calls for comment on a rescue. A presidential spokesman did not respond immediately to a request for an update.

A spokesman for Kaduna state governor said it was a “national security” matter and he was unable to comment.

Second mass kidnap

The Kuriga attack was the second mass kidnapping in Nigeria in a week, illustrating the task faced by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who has promised to improve security since coming to office in May.

Kaduna State governor Uba Sani said security forces were working with state officials, but cautioned media against politicising the incident at such a sensitive moment.

No group has claimed any responsibility, but residents blamed bandits, the gangs that raid villages to loot and carry out mass abductions for ransom especially in Nigeria’s northwestern states.

A week earlier, Islamist militants also kidnapped as many as 200, mostly women and children, from a camp for people displaced by jihadist conflict in northeast Borno State. Officials have given conflicting figures for the numbers of missing in that attack.

UN child welfare agency UNICEF has called on the government to do better at protecting schools in Nigeria, where hundreds of pupils have been kidnapped in the last three years.

Most were released after weeks or months in camps hidden in forests following negotiations and ransom payments.

Kabir Adamu, director of Nigeria risk firm Beacon Consulting, said preventing school abductions was one of the responsibilities of the national police and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps paramilitary outfit.

“The leadership of these organisations should be held responsible for failing to prevent the attacks,” he told AFP.

More than 40,000 people have been killed and another two million displaced by fighting in Nigeria’s northeast since the jihadist war began in 2009.

Violence has eased and militants have been forced back from areas they once controlled but they still launch attacks, carry out kidnapping raids and ambush convoys in remote areas.

But security forces are also battling the heavily armed criminal gangs in the northwest, where hundreds of thousands of people have also been displaced, a surge in intercommunal clashes in the northcentral region and simmering separatism in the southeast.

© AFP 2024

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    Mute Oliver Cleary
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    Mar 12th 2024, 10:54 AM

    All the “Hamas” bots seem to be missing when it comes to denouncing Islamists when it comes to kidnapping of Women and Children. Double standards from the left and Islamic ideologies.

    Hope international attention leads to the children and women being found. Thanks Journal for highlighting it.

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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Mar 12th 2024, 11:01 AM

    @Oliver Cleary: I don’t think you’ll find anyone that supports such actions.

    Nice try at deflection, though.

    No, care to condemn Israel’s crimes against humanity?
    Crimes it has been committing since it first stole the homeland of the Palestinian.

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    Mute Oliver Cleary
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    Mar 12th 2024, 11:03 AM

    @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I’ll engage when you use your real name. Stop hiding behind a pseudonym. You do not merit honest discussion because you are in essence dishonest

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    Mar 12th 2024, 11:46 AM

    @Oliver Cleary: What you mean you find yourself unable to condemn Israel’s crimes against humanity.

    Why does any pseudonym prevent you from doing that?

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    Mute Etcher
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    Mar 12th 2024, 12:59 PM

    @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: “since it first stole the homeland of the Palestinian” showed your cards there, you obviously have zero understanding of the conflict

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    Mar 12th 2024, 3:06 PM

    @Etcher: @Etcher: What do I not understand?

    If people claiming to be descendants of Irish who left these shores long ago illegally moved back here, established terrorist groups, attacked us, drove us out of our homes, off our lands and out of our towns and villages, attacked and overthew our government and established their own state here, then what would be different about what the colonial Israeli settler has done to the Palestinian?

    And what do you think we would do about it?

    And wouldn’t we be right?

    Now would you like to tell us your understanding?

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    Mute Sun Rise
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    Mar 12th 2024, 10:35 AM

    It is not cool enough to be seen to be concerned about what happens in Nigeria.

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    Mute F Fitzgerald
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    Mar 12th 2024, 12:43 PM

    @Sun Rise: Since when? It’s a scandal that they can’t protect their schoolchildren. Similar happened in Italy years ago, it was rife. All for money mostly.

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    Mute Etcher
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    Mar 12th 2024, 12:58 PM

    @Sun Rise: What a dump of a country

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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Mar 12th 2024, 7:27 PM

    @Etcher: There aren’t that many books available here that give an insight into life in Nigeria, or West Africa even.

    But an author that does have a few books on the shelves is Oyinkan Braithwaite, and her novel My Sister, the Serial Killer is worth the read.

    But this is based in a city (Lagos perhaps, I can’t remember), and does not touch on rural Nigerian life, much less the life of those in the northern parts that are subject to much of this terrorism.

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    Mute Brian Hunt
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    Mar 12th 2024, 11:47 AM

    You have to admire these brave Jihadists on their dangerous military operations. One of the school children might throw their schoolbag at them, causing scratches!

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    Mar 12th 2024, 5:14 PM

    @Brian Hunt: As brave as the Israelis, would you say?

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    Mute Tilal Moore
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    Mar 12th 2024, 1:19 PM

    Horrendous for these children & their families. Hope they are reunited soon & not abused or trafficked, like the 14 year who went missing from Tulsa

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