Malik Yahya/
Fifty of the more than 300 children abducted from a Catholic school in Nigeria have managed to escape and reunited with their families, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) announced on Sunday.
The group said the pupils made their break between Friday and Saturday.
The abduction took place in the early hours of Friday, when armed assailants attacked St Mary’s School, a boarding institution in Papiri, Niger State, seizing over 300 students as well as a dozen teachers.
After a careful verification exercise and census, CAN revealed that 303 students and 12 teachers were taken, raising the total to 315 people.
Security forces report that the kidnappers arrived at around 2am and abducted students staying in the boarding quarters.
Authorities are now combing nearby forests in a bid to rescue those still held captive.
In response, state officials ordered all schools across Niger State to close, citing the heightened security risk.
CAN and the Catholic Diocese of Kontagora have strongly denied allegations that the school ignored prior government warnings to suspend boarding operations, calling such claims “propaganda.”
This mass abduction is the third such incident in Nigeria within a week. Earlier, more than 20 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a boarding school in Kebbi State, and a separate attack on a church in Kwara State led to two fatalities and 38 more abductions.
President Bola Tinubu has postponed planned foreign trips, including attendance at the G20 summit, amid mounting pressure over Nigeria’s spiralling security crisis.
The incident has stoked widespread public alarm about the growing threat posed by bandits and terrorists.
Though ransom payments are now outlawed, kidnappings persist. Some international observers frame the wave of attacks as part of a broader trend of violence targeting Christians, but the Nigerian government rejects this narrative, emphasising that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology, including Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike.”
Analysts, however, note that in many parts of northern and central Nigeria, violence is frequently rooted in resource-based conflicts rather than religious identity.
In comparison, the 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Chibok drew global outcry. While many of those girls have since been freed or escaped, around 100 are still believed to be missing.
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