JANGEBE, Nigeria – Suwaida Sani was one of the lucky few.
When dozens of heavily armed gunmen broke into the gates of his boarding school, launching bullets into the air in the early hours of Friday morning, they demanded that all students enter the courtyard or be shot.
Suwaida ran in the other direction, crouching under a mosquito net and shivering as the flashlight beams traced the wall above his head. When the 13-year-old girl came out of hiding the next morning, the armed men kidnapped more than 300 of her schoolmates aged 11 to 17 and took them to a nearby forest. It was the biggest kidnapping of girls in the history of a country where these kidnappings are becoming increasingly familiar.
“They were looking for someone in hiding, but thank God they didn’t see me,” said Suwaida, sitting safely between her parents in the living room of her one-story home. “So many friends of mine have been taken away that I can’t even count the number,” she said through tears. “May God spare you.”
The kidnapping of the Government Secondary School for Girls in the small town of Jangebe is the second in just over a week in northwest Nigeria, where an increase in armed militancy has led to a worsening of the security breach and where rescue kidnapping has become profitable industry.