At least 28 of the 287 pupils who were kidnapped by an armed group in north-west Nigeria a few days ago have escaped: he said it a BBC News the governor of Kaduna state, Uba Sani, in an early development in what was one of the largest abductions of pupils from a school in the country’s recent history. The last large one occurred in June 2021, when an armed group kidnapped more than 80 pupils from a school in the province of Kebbi, also in the north-west of the country.
Both the Nigerian army and groups of family members and volunteers are continuing to search for the girls and boys who were abducted from a school in the city of Kuriga on Thursday, all aged between eight and fifteen. The searches are concentrated mainly in the forests of Kaduna state and in some areas of the neighboring states of Katsina and Zamfara. One of the abducted children, believed to be 14 years old, died after being shot and wounded by one of the kidnappers.
In Nigeria, mass kidnappings with the aim of demanding ransom were quite frequent until a few years ago, but in recent times there have been fewer of them, also because in 2022 a controversial law was approved that makes it illegal to pay ransoms. Thursday’s, however, was the second major kidnapping in the space of two days, given that on Wednesday in the north-east of the country dozens more people had been kidnapped from a camp for displaced people.
In the north-west of Nigeria, kidnappings are carried out by simple criminal groups, while in the north-east jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, affiliated to ISIS, are also active.
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