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On Monday, gunmen seized an unknown number of primary school students and teachers in Nigeria’s northwestern state of Kaduna, in an area ravaged by banditry and kidnappings.
The raid is the latest in a series of attacks on schools in Nigeria, just four days after the kidnapping of 39 students by a gang.
Kaduna Home Affairs Commissioner Samuel Aruwan said the government had received security reports that “some students and teachers” had been abducted from LEA Primary School in Rema, Birnin Gwari region.
Authorities “are now obtaining details of the actual number of students and teachers allegedly kidnapped,” he said in a statement.
The total number of children enrolled in school was not immediately known. Most primary school students in Nigeria are between 6 and 11 years old.
Gangs in northwest and central Nigeria, known locally as bandits, have recently turned to mass kidnappings, seizing schoolchildren for ransom.
At least four mass kidnappings have taken place since December.
Gunmen kidnapped 39 students Thursday evening from hostels on the outskirts of the city of Kaduna, the state capital.
Authorities closed their college on Monday and sent home 180 other students and staff who had been rescued.
“Yesterday, under cover of the army, we brought all the students back to school so that they could collect all their personal belongings before handing them over to their parents”, Abubakar Hassan, head of the National Agency for Kaduna Emergency (SEMA), told AFP.
“The parents asked these students to be handed over to them and they would have been released sooner, but we had to deal with their trauma and bring them to a certain level of comfort,” he added.
Over the weekend, security forces thwarted a gang that had stormed a high school in Ikara, Aruwan said Sunday.
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