Nigerian police said on Monday that a swarm of armed “bandits” descended upon a girls’ boarding school in the state of Kebbi, killed one staff member, and abducted 25 of the students.
According to the Daily Trust of Nigeria, the Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School (GGCSS) is located in Maga, a community that has “come under multiple attacks in recent time.”
An eyewitness said the invaders struck at roughly 5:00 a.m. on Monday morning local time, storming the school with little resistance. The staff member killed by the “bandits” was the school principal.
“He was shot as he tried to protect his students from being taken by the bandits. It’s a great loss for the community and the school,” a local resident said mournfully.
Local police confirmed the attack and said they deployed “tactical units” to engage the “suspected bandits,” but the heavily armed attackers were able to hold the police at bay and escape with their 25 captives.
Nigeria’s Vanguard said the bandits attacked in “large numbers, wielding sophisticated weapons.” According to this report, the slain staff member was the school’s vice principal. Eyewitnesses said they could see several “unidentified bodies” on school grounds after the attack.
Police officials said Commissioner Bello Sani was making “efforts to ensure no student in captivity gets hurt by the bandits” while he tries to “bring an end to the menace.” Senator Umar Tafida, the deputy governor of Kebbi, is reportedly en route to Maga to “know the exact situation.”
Local residents told the Premium Times of Nigeria they were “puzzled” at how the attackers managed to scale the fences around the school, kidnap 25 students, and get away with their prisoners despite several military checkpoints in the area. One of those checkpoints is less than a kilometer from the school.
A local community leader said military forces were warned about an imminent attack, but mysteriously “withdrew” and left police officers to “handle the matter.” The Nigerian Army did not respond to a request for comment from the Premium Times.
The BBC noted that Monday’s incident was “the first major school abduction since March 2024, when more than 200 pupils were seized from a school in Kuriga, Kaduna state.”
“Over the past decade, schools in northern Nigeria have become frequent targets for armed groups, who often carry out abductions to seek ransom payments or leverage deals with the government,” the BBC observed.
The perpetrators of these attacks are usually referred to as “bandits” by Nigerian officials and media, but their true identity can range from criminal gangs seeking profit to jihadi terrorists from groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
Boko Haram was behind the infamous Chibok girls school raid in 2014, in which nearly 300 young women were abducted from a Christian community in northern Borno State. Over 90 of the victims are still missing. Those who were rescued reported their jihadi abductors forced them to become “wives” and convert to Islam. The Nigerian government has long been criticized for not doing enough to rescue the girls.
The Premium Times quoted a “local intelligence source working with the State Security Services” who said the Maga kidnapping attack could be the work of Dogo Gide or Falando, two notorious bandit gangs named after their slain leaders.
Dogo Gide is believed to be allied with jihadi groups, while Falando is noted for running a massive kidnapping operation. Falando’s leader was killed in a gun battle with Nigerian troops on the border of Kebbi state in April 2024.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), a human rights and advocacy group, condemned the mass kidnapping on Monday and blasted the Nigerian federal government for not doing enough to protect vulnerable citizens.
“We call on the heads of the security institutions, the armed forces, the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force, to immediately activate mechanisms to chase these terrorists, rescue the hostages who are our daughters, arrest, neutralize or decimate the terrorists abductors or bring them to Swift justice,” HURIWA said.
“We urge the government to put foolproof and sustainable security and intelligence gathering initiatives all across the country to prevent reoccurrence of such dastardly crimes of mass abduction of students,” the group added, noting that the government has budgeted huge sums of money for school security and intelligence gathering, but kidnappers can still strike with impunity.
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