Nigerian authorities yesterday secured the release of 100 of the students seized in a horrific mass abduction from a Catholic boarding school on 19 November.
Details of the release have not been provided, raising the possibility of a deal with the gang holding the students.
Gunmen seized about 303 students and 12 staff in the raid on St. Mary’s School, located in the Papiri community in Agwara Local Government Area in the west-central state of Niger.
About 50 of the children managed to escape while being herded into the forest.
The victims include boys and girls and range in age from 10 to 18.
About 150 students remain in captivity along with the staff members.
Authorities described the kidnappers as “armed bandits,” a term for the heavily armed criminal gangs that have proliferated in northwestern and north-central Nigeria in the past few years.
The gangs, which operate from lairs in dense forest, repeatedly have kidnapped villagers and students from boarding schools.
They also routinely stage kidnappings of vehicle occupants on major roads.
Kidnap victims typically are released one by one following ransom negotiations with their families. Many hostages die in captivity.
The 19 November mass kidnapping is on par with the infamous 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls by the Islamic terror cult Boko Haram in the northeastern state of Borno.
Under intense pressure, President Bola Tinubu on 26 November declared a nationwide state of emergency and announced that 20,000 police officers would be recruited, raising the total to 50,000.
He also ordered a sharp cut in the number of mobile police (MOPOL) officers deployed to protect VIPs, leading to the transfer of 11,566 officers from protection details to deployment in areas where armed groups that engage in mass kidnappings are active.
Under the presidential order, armed protection for VIPs now will have to be requested from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC).
The effect on the private sector remains to be seen.
Armed protection for foreign and local corporate personnel outside elite enclaves remains imperative given high rates of kidnapping, carjacking and other violent crime across Nigeria.
Gangs that specialize in mass abductions are particularly active in the northwestern states of Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara states and swathes of adjoining states like Niger, Kebbi, Kaduna and Kano.
Meanwhile in the far northeast, security forces have struggled to contend with insurgencies by Boko Haram and its even more potent offshoot, Islamic State – West Africa Province (IS-WAP). While fighting each other and the army, the two groups continue to routinely engage in kidnapping. In the past, they have targeted locals and foreigners employed by international humanitarian organizations.
In the rest of the country, kidnapping for ransom is a serious problem, with perpetrators sometimes netting several victims at a time.
Illustrating the scale of the problem, police acting on a tip over the weekend raided an improvised mortuary in a hotel in Umuhu, Ngor-Okpala district in the southeastern state of Imo. More than 100 bodies of apparent kidnap victims were discovered in what appears to have been an organ harvesting operation. The owner of the hotel, the prime suspect, remains at large.
Throughout Nigeria, kidnappers prize Western and other foreign hostages for the large ransoms they draw.
The victims of the apparent organ harvesting operation likely were poorer Nigerians.
Corporate personnel should avoid all of Nigeria north of Abuja. If travel there must be undertaken, security professionals should be consulted.
Those who must visit Abuja and its surroundings should be alert constantly due to latent terrorism risks posed by Boko Haram and IS-WAP. The city should be reached by air exclusively. Potential terrorist targets include hotels, places of worship, malls, Nigerian government facilities, embassies and large gathering places. Westerners should not visit shopping venues during peak hours of operation, and should not linger after completing transactions. Personnel in the capital and nearby area should not circulate after dark. Those on the ground for more than a few days should alter travel times and routes.
See the country summary for advice pertaining to serious kidnapping and other risks in the rest of Nigeria, including Lagos.
