Nigerian gunmen have taken an unspecified number of students from a college in a northwestern state, local police said on Friday in the latest abduction against schools.
The suspected kidnapping gang stormed the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Mando, Kaduna, around 1 p.m. 21.30 (20:30 GMT) on Thursday and shot indiscriminately and took students hostage.
The university is said to have about 300 male and female students – mostly 17 years and older – at the time of the attack, but it was not immediately clear how many were seized or missing. “There was a kidnapping incident at the forestry school, but we have no details on the number of students abducted,” State Police spokesman Mohammed Jalige told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The police alongside the army are working to track down and rescue the students,” he said. Heavily armed gangs in northwestern and central Nigeria have intensified attacks in recent years, kidnapping for ransom, rape and looting.
The bandits have recently targeted schools where they kidnap students or school children for ransom – Thursday was at least the fourth attack since December. Samuel Aruwan, Kaduna State Commissioner for Home Affairs, visited the school early Friday.
He confirmed the latest abduction and said an investigation was underway. Residents also heard repeated shots in the area late Thursday.
“We kept hearing shots that we ignored as shooting drills from the Nigeria Defense Academy, which is a stone’s throw from the Forest College,” said Mustapha Aliyu, who lives in the area. “It was only when we came out for the morning prayers in the mosque that we learned that it was armed men who took students away from the university,” he said. Aliyu said only female students could have been taken out of college.
“From what other students told us, the shooters only took female students,” Aliyu said.
The area is known for bandit and armed robbery, especially along the highway that connects the city with the airport.
The gangs are largely driven by economic motives and have no known ideological inclination. The victims are often released shortly after the negotiations, but officials always deny ransom payments. On Saturday, criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, broke into the staff quarters at the nearby Kaduna airport and abducted 12 people, according to airport officials. On February 27, 279 schoolgirls abducted in the nearby state of Zamfara.
One week earlier, gunmen arrested 42 people, including 27 students from a boarding school for all boys in central Niger. In December, hundreds of schoolboys were seized in Katsina, the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, while he was visiting.
The United States has condemned the recent attacks on schools.
“Frankly, we are disgusted by this pattern of mass abductions of school children. I can not think of anything more abhorrent,” Michael Gonzales, deputy secretary of state at the US State Department’s Office of African Affairs, told a briefing. He said the United States “is ready to provide appropriate support to the Nigerian government if called upon to do so.”
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