Nigerian security forces have intensified their search operations for 25 female students abducted by armed assailants from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State. The attack, which occurred in the early hours of Monday, marks yet another distressing episode in the country’s ongoing struggle with mass school kidnappings and worsening insecurity.
Parents gathered anxiously at the school premises on Tuesday, with some expressing relief that two students had managed to escape captivity late Monday evening.
Police confirmed that gunmen armed with assault rifles stormed the school around 4 a.m. local time (0300 GMT), arriving on motorcycles in a coordinated assault. Officers on duty engaged the attackers in a gun battle before the assailants scaled the school’s perimeter fence and abducted the girls.
School officials noted that most of the students, including those kidnapped, are Muslims, reflecting the religious makeup of the region.
“We must find these children. Act decisively and professionally on all intelligence. Success is not optional,” Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, told troops during his visit to Kebbi on Tuesday, urging swift and coordinated action.
Nazifi Isa, a resident whose daughter was among those taken, described the anguish gripping the community. “Since yesterday, we haven’t eaten, and my wife is in tears. I can’t even go back home to see her because I know how distraught she is,” Isa told Reuters over the phone.
Growing U.S. Pressure on Nigeria
Nigeria has come under increasing scrutiny from Washington after President Donald Trump threatened possible military intervention over what he described as the persecution of Christians by Islamist insurgents, including Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram.
The country continues to battle multiple security crises, from Islamist insurgencies in the northeast to mass abductions for ransom in the northwest, as well as deadly clashes between farmers and herders in the central region.
In a fresh blow to the nation’s counterinsurgency efforts, ISWAP claimed responsibility over the weekend for abducting and executing a Nigerian army general in the northeast. Meanwhile, local media reported that another armed group kidnapped 64 people, including women and children, in Zamfara State, which borders Kebbi. Many of these incidents go unreported due to poor communication infrastructure in remote areas.
Echoes of the Chibok Tragedy
The attack in Maga has reignited painful memories of Boko Haram’s abduction of more than 300 schoolgirls from Chibok in 2014, an event that triggered international outrage and the global “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign.
While some of the Chibok girls were freed through military operations and negotiated releases, many remain missing to this day. Despite widespread reforms and security pledges, mass school abductions have continued across northern Nigeria, with hundreds of students taken in similar raids over the past decade.
As security operations intensify in Kebbi, families of the missing girls wait in anguish, praying for their safe return and renewed government action to end the cycle of school kidnappings that has terrorized communities for years.
