Gunmen attacked a girls’ boarding school in Kebbi State, northwest Nigeria, early Monday, killing a vice principal and abducting 25 female students in what authorities described as a coordinated assault.
According to police spokesperson Nafiu Abubakar Kotarkoshi, the assailants arrived around 4 a.m. local time at the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga town, armed with rifles and prepared for confrontation. They exchanged gunfire with police officers before scaling the school’s perimeter fence and carrying out the mass abduction. Vice Principal Hassan Yakubu Makuku was shot dead while attempting to resist the attackers, and another staff member was wounded.
In response, police deployed tactical units alongside soldiers and local vigilantes to track the perpetrators through suspected escape corridors and forested areas. The incident adds to a long pattern of mass kidnappings in Nigeria’s northwest, where armed criminal gangs — often referred to locally as “bandits” — have repeatedly targeted schools for ransom. These attacks continue despite government efforts to reinforce security following high-profile kidnappings such as Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of over 270 schoolgirls in Chibok, many of whom remain missing.
The Kebbi assault comes against the backdrop of another major kidnapping crisis. In March 2024, at least 287 schoolchildren were abducted in Kuriga village in neighboring Kaduna State. The kidnappers later issued a chilling ransom demand of 1 billion naira (about $621,800), threatening to kill all the students if the government failed to comply within 20 days. A local resident, Aminu Jibril, told CNN that the abductors contacted him directly, claiming the kidnapping was retaliation for the killing of their gang members by security forces. Jibril believes his phone number was obtained from a school official kidnapped alongside the children.
The Kuriga attack occurred when armed bandits on motorcycles stormed the LEA Primary and Secondary School in Chikun district, seizing nearly 300 students. While some escaped or were rescued, hundreds remained in captivity. Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani stated that his administration was taking all possible steps to secure the release of the students. A community member who attempted to confront the attackers during the raid was killed.
Kaduna, which borders Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, has endured a series of mass abductions in recent years. In 2021, at least 140 secondary school students were kidnapped in the state, and months earlier, gunmen abducted around 20 university students in the same district. Five of those students were later killed when ransom demands went unmet.
