Nigerian government frees 130 kidnapped Catholic schoolchildren

Nigeria

Abuja –  Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school in November, a presidential spokesman said Sunday, after 100 were freed earlier this month.

“Another 130 abducted Niger state pupils released, none left in captivity,” Sunday Dare said in a post on X.In late November, hundreds of students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state.The attack came as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in the town of Chibok.

The west African country suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns, from jihadists in the northeast to armed “bandit” gangs in the northwest.

The exact number taken from St Mary’s has been unclear throughout the ordeal.

Initially, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said 315 students and staff were unaccounted for after the attack in the rural hamlet of Papiri.

Around 50 of them escaped immediately afterwards, and on December 7 the government secured the release of around 100.

That would leave about 165 thought to be still in captivity before Sunday’s announcement that 130 were rescued.

But a UN source told AFP that all those taken appeared to have been released – as dozens thought to have been kidnapped had in fact managed to run off during the attack, and make their way home.

The accounting has been complicated because the children’s homes are scattered across swathes of rural Nigeria, sometimes requiring three or four hours of travel by motorbike to reach their remote villages, the source said.

The source told AFP that “the remaining set of girls/secondary school students will be taken to Minna”, the capital of Niger state, on Monday.

“We’ll have to still do final verification,” Daniel Atori, a spokesman for CAN in Niger state, told AFP.

He added that Niger state Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago had called the bishop of the Kontagora diocese, which runs the school, “to confirm the release of the children and teachers”, though “the figure was not mentioned”.

 Spate of mass kidnappings 

It has not been made public who seized the children from their boarding school, or how the government secured their release.

Analysts have said that based on past rescues, it was likely the authorities paid a ransom, which is technically prohibited by law.

Kidnappings for ransom are a common way for criminals and armed groups to make quick cash in Nigeria.

But a spate of mass abductions in November put an uncomfortable spotlight on the country’s already grim security situation.

Assailants kidnapped two dozen Muslim schoolgirls, 38 church worshippers and a bride and her bridesmaids – with farmers, women and children also taken hostage.

The kidnappings came as Nigeria faces a diplomatic offensive from the United States, where President Donald Trump has alleged that there were mass killings of Christians that amounted to a “genocide” and threatened military intervention.

Nigeria’s government and independent analysts reject that framing, which has long been used by the Christian right in the United States and Europe.

One of the first mass kidnappings that drew international attention was in 2014, when nearly 300 girls were snatched from their boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok by Boko Haram jihadists.

A decade later, Nigeria’s kidnap-for-ransom crisis has “consolidated into a structured, profit-seeking industry” that raised some $1.66 million between July 2024 and June 2025, according to a recent report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy.

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Source: AFP

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