KANO, Nigeria: Gunmen on Saturday abducted 15 students from a seminary in northwestern Sokoto state, days after a mass abduction of more than 280 students in neighboring Kaduna state, local sources said.
According to a staff member, armed men stormed the village of Gidan Bakuso in Gada district at around 1 GMT Saturday and rounded up 15 seminary students who were sleeping outside.
“The gunmen were passing by the school with a woman they kidnapped from another part of town and the pupils were awoken by her cries,” said the head of the seminary, Liman Abubakar.
“The bandits seized 15 of the pupils, aged between eight and 14, and took them away along with the woman,” he said further.
A member of Sokoto state parliament from the region, Kabiru Dauda, confirmed the abductions.
“I received a call early this morning from my constituency that bandits had taken 15 pupils from a seminary,” he said.
Police officials in the state are yet to respond the inquiries. The state government has launched a volunteer force to fight bandits in the state.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has recently sent troops to recover over 250 seminary students kidnapped by bandits in the country’s northwest in what was the biggest mass kidnapping in three years.
Northwest and central Nigeria have long been terrorized by organized crime. Known as bandits, they attack villages, kidnap and kill residents, and burn their houses after looting.
The gang, which maintains camps in vast jungles, is also known for mass kidnappings from schools to extort ransom from parents and the government.
Informal Islamic seminaries that teach the Koran are common in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, where students mostly survive on charity. Kidnapping is on the rise in the North West.
Victims are usually released after their relatives pay a ransom, but those who fail to pay are killed by their captors and their bodies left in the bush.
