DAKAR, Senegal – Dozens of Nigerian children were abducted by armed men on Wednesday morning, becoming the latest victims of the West African country’s fall into insecurity.
Armed men in military uniforms kidnapped at least 40 people, mostly students, from a boarding school in the northwestern city of Kagara, in the state of Niger. They shot and killed a student.
Some managed to escape.
“I am safe,” said Ibrahim Ndanusa, 13, in a phone call to his father after running away from his kidnappers. “But I suffered.”
Kidnappings have been a problem for a long time in Nigeria and are getting worse in many parts of the country.
The most notorious mass kidnapping was that of the Chibok Girls by Boko Haram in 2014. This was in the state of Borno, in the northeast of the country, the epicenter of the insurgency of the Islamic extremist group against the state.
But Wednesday’s kidnapping took place in the northwest of the country and is the latest in a series of attacks by criminal gangs known locally as bandits. In December, more than 300 boys were removed from a school in the president’s home state, Katsina, and then released. Then, two days later, more than 80 students from Islamic schools were kidnapped in the same state and almost immediately rescued.
With the police overloaded and the army deployed in almost all Nigerian states to combat the country’s many crises, security agencies are dispersed. Gangs of armed criminals operate in much of the country, and the government is often criticized for its inability to keep its citizens safe.
In the last years, the number of abducted victims in each attack has increased. Kidnappers have become more indiscriminate in their targets, often kidnapping villagers who have little money to pay ransoms.
As in previous attacks, the armed men of Wednesday’s attack arrived at Government Science College in Kagara, which has about 1,000 students, in the middle of the night.
In the chaos after the attack, the school at first struggled to determine how many people had been taken, but it ended up reaching 26 students, along with three employees and 12 of their relatives, according to local journalists.
A school teacher, Aliyu Isah, told the Associated Press that armed men entered the school’s premises at around 1:30 am. He said they forced him to take them to the student dormitories, where he and some students were tied up in pairs.
“They told the students not to worry, that they were soldiers,” he told the AP, adding that some of the snipers were wearing army uniforms.
“They gathered all the students outside, but some ran into the bush,” said Isah.
The kidnapping was the most recent of several attacks in the state of Niger in recent days, according to Mary Noel Berje, the governor’s press secretary.
On Monday, a bus was hijacked and 21 people were kidnapped.
On Tuesday, about 50 men on motorcycles carrying AK-47s ripped through several villages, according to local media, killing 11 people and kidnapping 20.
“These are things that are happening everywhere,” said Berje. “It is impossible for anyone, not even the governor, to have any idea who the bandits are. They are not living inside of us, they are living outside of us. We don’t know where they come from. “
President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the country’s security agencies to guarantee the release of the victims, and several ministers, the national security adviser and the inspector general of the police flew to Minna, the capital of the state of Niger.
The governor announced the closure of boarding schools in the parts of the state most affected by banditry.
When school children are released after previous mass kidnappings, politicians sometimes take the opportunity to receive credit. After the 300 students from Katsina’s abduction were released, the boys had to wait until Mr. Buhari gave them a speech in front of the television cameras, before they could return home.
Usman Ndanusa’s 13-year-old son, Ibrahim, was among the boys kidnapped on Wednesday in Kagara. Arriving at the school to look for his son, Mr. Ndanusa met a huge crowd of people. While waiting to speak to the director, his phone rang. Her heart sank.
“I thought it was the kidnappers who wanted to talk to me,” said Ndanusa.
But it was Ibrahim.
“Daddy! Daddy! I’m safe,” Mr. Ndanusa heard his son say. “I escaped the bandits who came to kidnap us.”
Then, said Ndanusa, his son started to cry. He immediately went to fetch Ibrahim from the family that took him in after his escape. When he arrived, they were serving breakfast.
Ruth Maclean reported from Dakar, Senegal, and Ismail Alfa from Maiduguri, Nigeria.