A group of 24 Nigerian girls who were kidnapped from their boarding school more than a week ago have been freed, the country’s president said.
Armed assailants stormed a school in Kebbi state, Nigeria, on November 17, killing two staff members and kidnapping about 25 students. Two of them managed to escape shortly after.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu praised security forces for their “quick response” to the incident, although the circumstances of the girls’ release remain unclear.
Africa’s most populous nation has suffered a series of kidnappings in recent years: more than 250 children kidnapped from a Catholic school last Friday remain missing.
In a statement, a special adviser to the president confirmed that all girls abducted from school in Kebbi state had been accounted for, and said the raid had sparked copycat kidnappings in two neighboring Nigerian states.
Tinubu said more personnel would be deployed to “vulnerable areas to prevent further incidents of kidnapping.”
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More than 1,500 children have been kidnapped from Nigerian schools since 2014, when 276 girls were kidnapped during the infamous Chibok mass kidnapping.
On Friday, at least 300 children and staff were abducted from St Mary’s School, a Catholic boarding school, in Niger state, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria, which says at least 250 remain missing.
However, some Nigerian officials have suggested that the number of abductees may be smaller.
The region’s top Catholic cleric told the BBC that the Nigerian government is making “no significant effort” to rescue those still missing.
The school kidnapping was the third to hit Nigeria in a week, forcing President Bola Tinubu to cancel his trip to the G20 summit in South Africa at the weekend to address the crisis.
UN education envoy Gordon Brown called on the international community to “do everything possible” to support efforts to return abducted children.
Brown, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said: “It is also up to us to ensure that Nigerian schools are safe spaces for learning, not spaces where children can be taken from their classrooms for criminal profit.”
The kidnapping of people for ransom by criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, has become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria.
In the northeast of the country, jihadist groups have been fighting the state for more than a decade.
Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump threatened military action, accusing Nigerian authorities of failing to protect Christians from attacks by Islamist militants.
The Nigerian government has called claims that Christians are being persecuted “a gross misrepresentation of reality.”
The BBC was told that the students kidnapped from the Government Girls Comprehensive Higher Secondary School (GGCSS) in Kebbi are Muslims. One official has said that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology: Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike.”
Organizations that monitor violence say most victims of jihadist groups are Muslims because most attacks occur in the Muslim-majority north of the country.
