Armed men stormed Government Science Secondary School in Kankara LGA, Katsina State, northwest Nigeria, and kidnapped dozens of students from their dormitories early today, Saturday.
The principal of the school, Usman Abubakar who confirmed the development to Africa Independent Televison, AIT, in a phone call said, the bandits arrived at the school at around 10.15 pm Friday night and operated for about 1 hour.
According to Abubakar, the bandits in their numbers burgled the school gate and shot one of the policemen on duty on his leg who is presently receiving treatment in one of the hospitals. The other policeman who was also on duty escaped before the bandits gained complete access to the school.
He further added that the bandits later proceeded to the staff quarters where they abducted the wife of one of the workers but later released her while they went away with their child.
According to him, the situation was however brought under control when soldiers of the Nigerian Army stationed in Kankara came and engaged the bandits in a gun duel, forcing them to abort their operations and flee to the nearby bush with the abducted victims due to the superior firepower of the military.
According to Abubakar, the school management is presently conducting a headcount among the students to ascertain the exact number that was abducted during the attack.
Criminal gangs carrying out robberies and kidnappings have killed hundreds and abducted a hundred more over the last months in Buhari’s home state forcing residents to protest against the state of insecurity.
The Motorcycle-riding armed bandits operating out of abandoned forest reserves are the latest to join Nigeria’s lucrative kidnap for ransom industry, and are quite brazen in their operations.
The borders are porous and the vast forest reserves in the border regions have been turned into operational bases for the bandits.
NewsWireNGR had reported that, President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday left Abuja for his hometown, Daura in Katsina State.
And the kidnap of the school students happens at the same time to President – away from the seat of power for one week in what the Presidency described as a “private visit” to his hometown Daura, also in Katsina State.
His Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, in a statement titled “President Buhari in Daura on week-long private visit” said Buhari will undertake private engagements while in Daura.
This is not the first time students have been targeted by Nigerian armed groups, on the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students were kidnapped from the Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria.
Responsibility for the kidnappings was claimed by Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist terrorist organization based in northeastern Nigeria.
On February 19, 2018 at 5:30 pm, 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years old were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College (GGSTC). Dapchi is located in Bulabulin, Yunusari Local Government area of Yobe State, also in the northeast part of Nigeria.
