{"id":589134,"date":"2025-11-23T17:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T17:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/589134\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T17:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T17:09:13","slug":"fifty-children-escape-after-mass-school-abduction-in-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/589134\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty children escape after mass school abduction in Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orders were given for many schools to close in the states of Kebbi, Niger, Katsina, Yobe and Kwara.<\/p>\n

News of the children’s escape brought welcome relief for families and for a country that has been agonising over the fate of hundreds of schoolchildren abducted in Nigeria’s northwest. <\/p>\n

According to a Christian group involved in the case, the pupils managed to escape between Friday and Saturday in what is being described as a brave and risky attempt to flee their captors.<\/p>\n

The students and teachers were taken from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger state. earlier reports spoke of 303 students and 12 teachers being taken. <\/p>\n

Their number surpasses the 276 abducted during the infamous Chibok mass abduction of 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Local police say armed men stormed St Mary’s at around 02:00 (01:00 GMT), abducting students staying there.<\/p>\n

Niger state governor Mohammed Umaru Bongo announced on Saturday that all schools in the area would close, warning that was “not a time for blame game”.<\/p>\n

Dominic Adamu, whose daughters attend the school but were not taken, told the BBC: “Everybody is weak… It took everybody by surprise.”<\/p>\n

One distressed woman tearfully told the BBC that her nieces, aged six and 13, had been kidnapped, adding: “I just want them to come home.”<\/p>\n

The military, police and local vigilantes are conducting a search for the children, combing nearby forests and remote routes believed to have been used by the gunmen.<\/p>\n

Authorities in Niger state said St Mary’s School had disregarded an order to close all boarding facilities following intelligence warnings of a heightened risk of attacks. The school has not commented on that allegation.<\/p>\n

The kidnapping of people for ransom by criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, has become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria.<\/p>\n

The payment of ransoms has been outlawed in an attempt to cut the supply of money to the criminal gangs, but it has had little effect.<\/p>\n

On Monday, more than 20 schoolgirls, who the BBC has been told are Muslim, were kidnapped from a boarding school in Kebbi state.<\/p>\n

Authorities there have now ordered all secondary schools and colleges to close.<\/p>\n

A church was also attacked further south in Kwara state, with two people killed and 38 others abducted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orders were given for many schools to close in the states of Kebbi, Niger, Katsina, Yobe and Kwara.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-589134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115600121135547724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}