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Nigeria’s top security official on Monday assured school authorities that the hundreds of children abducted from a Catholic boarding school would return home “soon”, a spokesman said.
Armed groups kidnapped more than 300 teachers and staff from St. Mary’s co-education school in north-central Nigeria on November 21, amid a wave of mass abductions across the country.
National security adviser Nuhu Ribadu was quoted as telling school officials during a high-level visit to Kontagora in Niger State: “The children are fine and will be back soon.”
According to Daniel Atori, spokesman for the bishop overseeing the Catholic archdiocese that owns St. Mary’s school, Ribadu also said: “The children are where they are and will come back safely.”
Ribadu did not give further information about where the children are being held or the progress of government efforts to secure their release.
Nigeria has dealt with previous kidnappings through military operations, negotiations, and — analysts say — suspected ransom payments.
Since Boko Haram militants abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok more than ten years ago, mass kidnappings have remained a persistent challenge.
Carried out largely by armed groups known as “bandits“, kidnapping has evolved into a “structured, profit-seeking industry” generating millions of dollars, according to Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence.
A series of recent abductions has returned the issue to the forefront, with hundreds taken in November alone.
The latest kidnappings come as the United States intensifies diplomatic pressure on Nigeria over what it describes as the mass killing of Christians — a characterisation rejected by both the Nigerian government and independent conflict experts.
During the same week as the St. Mary’s incident, gunmen abducted 25 Muslim students from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in neighbouring Kebbi State.
Fifty students from St. Mary’s have since managed to escape, while the Kebbi students were freed through what the governor described as “non-kinetic” efforts.
Ribadu made his remarks while meeting with school authorities, accompanied by a government delegation that included the minister of humanitarian affairs and the director general of the Department of State Services.
