Gunmen have kidnapped 25 girls from a boarding school in Nigeria’s Kebbi state and killed at least one staff member, authorities said Monday.
The schoolgirls were taken away around 4am and no group immediately claimed responsibility for the incident.
Police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi told the Associated Press the gunmen had “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged fire with guards before abducting the girls.
“A combined team is currently combing suspected escape routes and surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the kidnapped students and arresting the perpetrators,” he said, adding that one person was killed and another injured.
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A woman looks on as she walks past a classroom at the Shehu Kangiwa Model Primary School in Argungu, Kebbi State, northern Nigeria, on April 12, 2025. (Leslie Fauvel/AFP via Getty Images)
“This is not about religion, Muslim or Christian. These criminals attack anyone they believe is vulnerable. Our priority is the protection of all Nigerian children, and we remain fully committed to dismantling these networks and holding every perpetrator accountable.”
Abdulkarim Abdullahi Maga, a resident who said his daughter and granddaughter were kidnapped in the raid, told the AP that the attackers entered the school on motorcycles.
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“They first went straight to the teacher’s house and killed him before killing the security guard,” Maga said.
“The Federal Government expresses its deep concern and solidarity with the families of the female students abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School, Maga, Danko/Wasagu Local Government Area of Kebbi State. We share in their pain and are determined to bring the girls home safely,” he said.
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“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has reiterated that the protection of all Nigerians, especially school children, remains a solemn responsibility of the state. The government condemns the reprehensible attack on innocent students and the killing of school officials who were performing their noble duty.”
FILE – A student’s name is written on a chair in an abandoned classroom at the Government Girls Secondary School, the day after the kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls by gunmen in Jangebe, a village in Zamfara State, northwest Nigeria on February 27, 2021. (Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images)
The latest kidnappings come amid a series of mass kidnappings in northern Nigeria in recent years.
In 2024, 280 students were kidnapped from a school in Kaduna state and at least 200 others, mostly internally displaced women and children, were kidnapped in Borno state while allegedly searching for firewood, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said.
In 2014, more than 200 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok were abducted by Boko Haram militants, sparking international outrage and a #BringBackOurGirls campaign.
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