Kaduna state - The African Mirror

Mar

2024

Hundreds of Nigerian children are being kidnapped – the government must change its security strategy

SCHOOL abductions have been a trend in Nigeria. The latest took place in Kaduna and Sokoto states, both in the northwest region, when over 300 children were abducted at different times in March 2024. Previous prominent cases have included the Chibok, Dapchi and Kankara abductions, which insurgents claimed to have perpetrated. As a security scholar and analyst who has researched and written extensively on aspects of Nigeria’s security challenges, including kidnapping and allied crimes, I see school abductions as a symptom of government neglect of territorial and human security. Territorial security refers to keeping the country’s geographical spaces (land, borders,…

Mar

2024

By GARBA MUHAMMAD and HAMZA IBRAHIM

Gunmen in Nigeria kidnap about 100 in weekend attacks

NEWS

GUNMEN in Nigeria kidnapped around 100 people, including women and children, in two weekend attacks in Kaduna state, residents and police said. Kidnappings by criminal gangs demanding ransoms have become an almost daily occurrence in Nigeria, especially in the north, with authorities seemingly powerless to stop them. Kaduna police spokesperson Mansur Hassan confirmed the incident in Kajuru Station village on Sunday night but could not give a figure on those missing. He said security agents had been deployed to rescue the villagers. Tanko Wada Sarkin, a village head, said 87 people were taken. "We have so far recorded the return…

Mar

2024

By GARBA MOHAMMAD, ABRAHAM ACHIRGA and GIULIA PARAVICINI

Nigeria kidnappings break up families, keep children out of school

NEWS

ESTHER Joseph said she went "almost mad" with anguish when her 13-year-old daughter Precious Sim was kidnapped from a northern Nigeria high school along with other students on July 5, 2021. In the following days, she tried to go after the kidnappers in the surrounding forest, but army soldiers - alerted by fellow community members - caught up with her and brought her back. In the end, she sold her meagre possessions - including pots, fans and a television set - and enlisted the help of her brothers and in-laws, as well as local church members, to pay a ransom…

Mar

2024

By The African Mirror

Nigerian kidnappers demand $620,000 for release of school hostages

NEWS

GUNMEN who kidnapped 286 students and staff from a school in northern Nigeria last week have demanded a total of 1 billion naira ($620,432) for their release, a spokesman for the families of the hostages and a local councillor told Reuters. The school children, some older students and members of the school staff were abducted on March 7 in the town of Kuriga, in Nigeria's northwestern Kaduna State, in the first mass kidnapping in the country since 2021. Jubril Aminu, a community leader who acts as a spokesman for the families of the hostages, said he had received a call on his…

Mar

2024

By GARBA MUHAMMAD and HAMZA IBRAHIM

Nigerian army hunts for kidnapped students, parents seek answers

NEWS

NIGERIAN soldiers were hunting for armed kidnappers who seized nearly 300 school pupils in Kaduna state last week, a security source said, as distraught parents sought answers on when they would be reunited with their children. The source said the army's Kaduna-based One Division was leading the operation and "will soon have the bandits in their sights". The soldiers were backed by the local police, intelligence agency and air force, as well as the Kaduna state vigilance service, a vigilante group that knows the local terrain, the source added. "The security agencies and the state government are working tirelessly to ensure the…

Mar

2024

By HAMZA IBRAHIM

Gunmen kidnap 15 students in dawn raid on Nigerian school

NEWS

GUNMEN kidnapped at least 15 students from a school in Nigeria's northwestern Sokoto state in a dawn raid, the school's owner and a resident said, days after some 300 students were abducted by a gang in northern Kaduna state. The gunmen forced their way into the school premises in the Sokoto village of Gidan Bakuso and started firing shots sporadically, waking and causing panic among the students, who ran for cover, said school owner Liman Abubakar Bakuso. "They succeeded in abducting 15 of my students, the oldest being 20 and 15, but all the others are below 13," said Bakuso by phone,…

Apr

2023

By The African Mirror

Nigerian students escape abductors two weeks after kidnapping

NEWS

EIGHT Nigerian secondary school students kidnapped by gunmen in northern Kaduna state two weeks ago escaped from their captors and were found by villagers who alerted security forces, the state's internal security commissioner said. Armed gangs operating mostly in remote parts of northwest Nigeria have carried out violent attacks against villagers, schools and motorists, abducting hundreds for ransom. The female students were seized by an armed gang on their way from school along with an unknown number of others, authorities said on April 4. Samuel Aruwan, Kaduna commissioner for internal security and home affairs, said the students escaped from a forest between…

Sep

2021

By The African Mirror

Nigerian state shuts down phones, bans motorbikes

NEWS

AUTHORITIES in Nigeria's Kaduna State shut down telecoms networks and banned the use of motorcycles as part of a raft of measures to tackle bandit gangs that have caused havoc in the country's northwest for months. Telecoms blackouts are already in force in neighbouring Zamfara and in parts of several other northwestern states, a tactic aimed at helping the security forces crackdown on the gangs by preventing coordination. Bandits seeking ransoms and loot have been blamed by the authorities for a string of mass school abductions and deadly attacks on villages and on military targets that have disrupted everyday life…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Six Kidnapped Nigerian students freed

NEWS

GARBA MUHAMMAD SIX students and two officials who were kidnapped last month from a school in Nigeria's Kaduna state were released after relatives paid ransom money, a school official and parent have disclosed. Kidnappings by armed men, commonly referred to in Nigeria as "bandits", have become endemic in northern Nigeria, disrupting the education of hundreds of thousands of children. Gunmen attacked the main campus of the Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic in Kaduna on June 10 and took students and staff members, in the process killing one student. The college's spokesman Abdullahi Shehu, said the students and officials were released at an…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Tears, singing as abducted Nigerian students return

NEWS

NEARLY two months after their abduction by armed gunmen, more than two dozen students in northwest Nigeria's Kaduna state were reunited with jubilant family members on Friday amid tears and celebratory singing. Thirty-nine students were taken from a forestry college at gunpoint on March 11. Ten were later released, and their parents said this week that two had escaped. The remaining 27 told reporters they were held in a forest, periodically beaten with sticks and guns, and allowed to contact their families only to beg for ransom. Female students said they tore their clothing to use as sanitary pads. "The…