At least 27 students were abducted Wednesday when armed men raided a state-run school in Niger State.
The gunmen, wearing military fatigues according to witnesses, stormed the Government Science Secondary School Kagara at around 2am on Wednesday morning. One student was killed during the abduction.
The tally of people abducted from the boarding school facility could also rise as an unknown number of teachers are still missing, the spokeswoman for the Niger state governor revealed.
“Information reaching us is that 27 students are still missing. We don’t know the number of teachers at the moment. We don’t want to put numbers that will turn out contradictory, but efforts are being made to rescue them,” Mary Noel Barje, the chief press secretary to Governor Abubakar Sani Bello, said.
“The governor has also ordered the boarding schools to close down,” Barje added.
Kagara resident Abubakar Mohammed told CNN that one student was killed by the gunmen.
“At about 2am, they stormed the staff quarters of the school,” said Mohammed, who told CNN he was at the school site Wednesday morning and saw a dead body being lifted out of the students’ hostel by police.
“They forced the children of staffers to take them to the hostel. There they abducted the students along with some members of staff. They killed one of the students in the hostel. His body is now at the police station in Kagara. Police is now everywhere in the school,” Mohammed said.
He added that residents of the community were on high alert after receiving a warning about the planned attack.
“At about yesterday evening, we heard information that bandits were coming to Kagara but we did not know where they will attack. Later at about 10pm, we heard that they were just on the outskirts of Kagara, there was panic,” he said.
