The gunmen, dressed in military uniforms according to witnesses, stormed the Kagara government secondary school on Wednesday morning around 2am. A student died during the kidnapping, a resident told CNN.
The count of people abducted at boarding school facilities could also increase, as an unknown number of teachers are still missing, a spokeswoman for the governor of the state of Niger told CNN.
“The information that comes to us is that 27 students are still missing. At the moment we don’t know the number of teachers. We don’t want to put numbers that are contradictory, but efforts are being made to rescue them,” Mary said. Noel Barje, the chief press secretary of Governor Abubakar Sani Bello, said.
Kagara resident Abubakar Mohammed told CNN that a student was killed by gunmen.
“Around two in the morning, they burst into the rooms of the school staff,” Mohammed, who told CNN he was at the school site Wednesday morning and watched as police he was lifting a corpse from the student hostel.
“They forced the employees’ children to take them to the hostel. There they kidnapped the students along with some staff members. They killed one of the hostel students. His body is now in the Kagara police station. Police are now everywhere in the school, ”Mohammed said.
He added that community residents were on high alert after receiving a warning about the planned attack.
“Around yesterday evening, we heard information that bandits were coming to Kagara, but we didn’t know where they would attack. Later, around 10pm, we learned that they were on the outskirts of Kagara, there was panic,” he said. to say.
President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the kidnapping of school children.
“The president has led the Armed Forces and the Police, to ensure the immediate and safe return of all captives,” Buhari spokesman Garba Shehu said on Wednesday.
“The president has also sent to Minna, Niger State, a team of security chiefs to coordinate the rescue operation and meet with state officials, community leaders, as well as parents and school staff.” .
A former Nigerian senator, Shehu Sani, told CNN that the school had no perimeter fence and would have allowed easy access to militants.
Sani, who was also a student at the school, told CNN: “The city is at the epicenter of the insurgency in the state of Niger. Fulani bandits operate within the axis and there are thousands of people. displaced in this area. Bandits in northwestern Nigeria are increasingly lethal and destructive than Boko Haram. ”
Buhari has recently removed all heads of Nigerian security forces and appointed new ones, amid growing insecurity and kidnappings in the country.
“The security situation in Nigeria is ‘overwhelming and threatens the country’s peace,'” Sani told CNN.
“It is unfortunate that service chiefs were allowed to remain for so long,” he added.
The Nigerian leader was on a sabbatical week in the state when the incident occurred.
Students of that invasion have since been released.