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LAGOS, Nov 17, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Gunmen from a criminal gang kidnapped 25 
people and killed a staff member in an early morning raid on a northwestern 
Nigerian girls' secondary school on Monday, police said.

The latest attack comes more than a decade after nearly 300 girls were 
abducted from Chibok in the restive northeastern region and sparked 
international outcry.

Since then, there has been a string of other abductions involving school 
children.

Police on Monday said the gang armed with "sophisticated weapons, shooting 
sporadically, stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School" in 
Kebbi state at about 4:00 am (0300 GMT).

Police were deployed but "unfortunately, the suspected bandits had already 
scaled through the fence of the school and abducted twenty-five students from 
their hostel to unknown destination," police said in a statement.

The school deputy head was shot dead while a security guard was injured 
during the attack, according to a report prepared for the United Nations.

The military, police tactical units and local vigilantes have "been deployed 
in the area and they are currently combing the bandits' routes and nearby 
forest" in a bid rescue the abducted students and arrest the gangs, police 
said.

Nigeria's northwest has for years been seeing a rise in heavily armed 
criminal gangs known as "bandits" who steal cattle, raid villages, kidnap and 
kill residents and loot and burn homes.

The northwest has become the region most affected by kidnappings.

Africa's most populous country has also been plagued by armed violence since 
the 2009 emergence of the Boko Haram group in the Lake Chad basin, in the 
northeast of the country.

The kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014 
made headlines around the world. Almost 100 of the captives remain missing.

More than 130 schoolchildren were kidnapped by gunmen in March last year in 
Kuriga, in another northwestern state of Kaduna. They were later released 
unharmed.

Data on kidnapping in Nigeria is unreliable mainly due to under-reporting, 
but according to a report last year by the charity Save the Children, more 
than 1,680 pupils were kidnapped in Nigerian schools from early 2014 to the 
end of 2022.

As the country grapples with security challenges on several fronts, hostage-
taking has spiralled into a nationwide industry and become a favoured tactic 
of bandit gangs and jihadists.

In the northwest, authorities have tried to negotiate with bandits, striking 
peace deals and deploy vigilante groups.

But they have had little success and critics say the kidnapping crisis is out 
of control.