No group claimed accountability for the raid which bore the hallmark of the Boko Haram group.
Printed On 16 Could 2026
Gunmen have kidnapped dozens of faculty pupils in Nigeria’s rebellion-ravaged northeastern state of Borno, residents instructed the Reuters and AFP information businesses.
The suspected fighters stormed Mussa Major and Junior Secondary College in Askira-Uba Native Authorities Space at about 9 am (08:00 GMT) on Friday whereas lessons had been in session and took a number of college students with them, Ubaidallah Hasaan, who lives close to the college, instructed Reuters.
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A trainer on the faculty instructed Reuters that armed attackers had arrived on bikes. “Regardless of some college students escaping to the bushes, I can inform you many had been taken away,” the trainer mentioned.
No group claimed accountability for the raid, which bore the hallmark of the Boko Haram group. Native lawmaker Midala Usman Balami known as the assault “heartbreaking” and urged authorities to behave swiftly.
Africa’s most populous nation is battling a 17-year armed rise up from such teams, who’ve made abductions a key tactic – together with the notorious 2014 kidnapping of lots of of schoolgirls in Chibok.
Mass kidnappings have change into a typical means for gangs and armed groups to make fast cash in Africa’s most populous nation, particularly in rural areas with little authorities presence.
A number of weeks in the past, gunmen raided an orphanage and kidnapped a minimum of 23 youngsters from an “remoted space” in Nigeria’s Kogi State capital, Lokoja, Kogi Data Commissioner Kingsley Fanwo mentioned in an announcement.
Borno and neighbouring states have seen repeated assaults on colleges and communities regardless of ongoing army operations, elevating considerations about safety gaps in rural areas.
The neighborhood of Mussa lies close to the Sambisa Forest, a longstanding stronghold of insurgent fighters who’ve waged a marketing campaign of violence in northeast Nigeria for greater than a decade.
In a separate incident on Friday, gunmen kidnapped college students at Baptist Nursery and Major College within the southwestern state of Oyo. The state has ordered faculty closures within the space whereas police launched a manhunt for the abductors.
Although violence has waned from the height of Nigeria’s rebellions, kicked off by Boko Haram’s 2009 rebellion, analysts have warned of a possible enhance in assaults since 2025, particularly in rural areas outdoors, or barely below, authorities management.
Gimba Kakanda, a Nigerian author and public servant, told Al Jazeera that the enlargement of territory through which these teams function “issues as a result of insurgencies are sustained not by ideology alone, however by terrain, provide routes, native economies, and the flexibility to maneuver males and materiel by means of areas the place the state is weak or absent”.
“Violence in northern Nigeria is sustained by a mix of doctrinal extremism, persistent poverty, academic exclusion, and a state whose presence is commonly too restricted to command confidence within the communities the place armed teams search recruits,” Kakanda mentioned.
