Gunmen on Sunday kidnapped scores of kids from an Islamic seminary in central Nigeria’s Niger state, police and residents stated.
Some 200 kids had been on the college on the time of the assault, the Niger state authorities stated on Twitter, including that “an unconfirmed quantity” were taken.
The abduction came a day after 14 students from a university in northwestern Nigeria were freed after 40 days in captivity.
Niger state police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said the attackers arrived on motorbikes in Tegina town and started shooting indiscriminately, killing one resident and injuring another, before kidnapping the children from the Salihu Tanko Islamic school.
One of the school’s officials, who asked not to be named, said the attackers initially took more than 100 children “but later sent back those they considered too small for them, those between four and 12 years old”.
The state authorities, in a sequence of tweets, stated the attackers had launched 11 of the pupils who had been “too small and couldn’t stroll” very far.
Armed gangs are terrorising inhabitants in northwest and central Nigeria by looting villages, stealing cattle, and taking people hostage.
Such seizures have become a frequent way for criminals to collect ransoms.
Since December 2020, 730 children and students have been kidnapped, before the attack on Sunday.
On April 20, gunmen known locally as “bandits” stormed Greenfield University in northwestern Nigeria and kidnapped round 20 college students, killing a member of the college’s employees in the method.
Five college students had been executed just a few days later to power households and the federal government to pay a ransom.
Fourteen of the scholars had been launched on Saturday.
Local press stated that the households had paid a ransom totalling 180 million naira ($440,000) for his or her launch.
The felony gangs keep camps in the Rugu forest which straddles Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states.
Their motives have been monetary with no ideological leanings however there may be rising concern they’re being infiltrated by jihadists from the northeast waging a 12-year-old rebellion to ascertain an Islamic state.
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