Gunmen kidnap pupils in Nigeria’s restive northwest
Kano, Nigeria, March 15 (AFP/APP): Gunmen on Monday seized an unspecified number of primary school pupils and teachers in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna, the government said, in a region wracked by banditry and kidnapping.
The raid is the latest in a string of attacks on schools in Nigeria, coming just four days after 39 college students were kidnapped by a gang. Kaduna’s home affairs commissioner, Samuel Aruwan, said the government had received security reports that “some pupils and teachers” had been abducted at the LEA Primary School in Rema, in the Birnin Gwari area.
The authorities are “currently obtaining details on the actual number of pupils and teachers reported to have been kidnapped,” he said in a statement. The total number of children enrolled at the school was not immediately known. Most primary pupils in Nigeria are aged between six and 11. Gangs in northwest and central Nigeria, who are known locally as bandits, have recently turned their focus to mass kidnappings, seizing school students for ransom.
At least four mass kidnappings have occurred since December. Gunmen abducted 39 students late Thursday from hostels on the outskirts of Kaduna city, the state capital.
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