Gunmen have abducted more than 300 schoolchildren and staff in what is considered the biggest mass kidnappings in recent Nigerian history, according to a Christian organization on Saturday.
The pre-dawn Friday attack on St Mary's mixed-gender school in Niger state occurred just days after gunmen invaded a high school in adjacent Kebbi state, taking 25 female students.
Earlier reports had indicated 227 victims were taken, but revised figures surfaced after a comprehensive verification exercise established that 303 students and 12 teachers had been kidnapped.
The abducted students, aged between eight and 18 years, represent nearly half of the school's overall student body of 629.
State officials have confirmed that security agencies and law enforcement are currently performing a comprehensive head count to establish the precise number of missing individuals.
In response to the growing security concerns, the local authorities has directed the shutting of all schools in the region, with neighboring states adopting comparable precautionary steps.
Additionally, the national education ministry has ordered the temporary closure of 47 boarding secondary schools across the country.
President Bola Tinubu has postponed overseas commitments, including attendance at the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to concentrate on managing the emergency.
The educational institution kidnappings constitute the most recent in a sequence of safety incidents that have rocked the nation, including an assault on a church in western Nigeria where gunmen shot dead two people and abducted many worshipers during a live-streamed service.
These incidents have occurred against the backdrop of global attention on Nigeria's security situation.
Nigeria continues to be scarred by the memory of the mass abduction of almost 300 schoolgirls by jihadist group Boko Haram in Chibok more than a decade ago, with several of those girls still missing.
In a concerning recording shared by religious groups, a frightened employee described hearing the noise of bikes and cars before experiencing "forceful banging" on multiple gates of the school premises.
"Students were weeping," the staff member reported, describing her terror while searching for keys to the area where the screaming was most intense.
The local Catholic authority stated that the "assailants operated aggressively and uninterrupted for almost three hours, searching dormitories."
Meanwhile, about 600km away on the outskirts of Abuja, concerned guardians were collecting their students from schools following the shutdown order.
One parent, a 40-year-old healthcare worker, expressed her shock at the magnitude of the abduction, asking how 300 students could be taken at once.
She concluded that the "authorities is failing to act to address insecurity," and voiced approval for international intervention to "salvage this crisis."
For years, well-equipped criminal gangs have been conducting killings and abductions for money in rural areas of northwest and central Nigeria, where state presence is limited.
While no group has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, bandit gangs demanding financial compensation frequently target schools in rural areas where security is weak.
These groups maintain camps in vast woodland areas straddling several states in the west of Nigeria.
While these bandits have no ideological leanings and are primarily driven by financial gain, their growing alliance with jihadist groups from the northeastern region has become a major source of concern for authorities and security analysts alike.
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