About 280 minors were abducted Thursday in northern Nigeria. They are pupils of a school in the municipality of Kuriga. According to correspondents, a terrorist group stormed the school, rounded up the group of pupils and took them away from the township.
According to the BBC correspondent, those kidnapped range between eight and 15 years old. Among those kidnapped are also some of the school's teachers. According to AFP, mass kidnappings of this type are carried out by armed gangs with the aim of collecting ransoms from families. It is one of the main sources of financing for the Islamic terrorist groups that proliferate in northern Nigeria.
Northwestern Nigeria is located near the region known as "The Three Borders," which is shared by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Political instability and ongoing governance crises in these Sahelian countries have allowed terrorist groups to proliferate. From the north, these armed gangs have permeated the borders of African coastal nations, creating serious security problems.
This is the case of the northern areas of Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast, subject to strong terrorist activity due to borders with little military surveillance due to an absence of modern means.
According to AFP, at least one person died during the assault according to what local residents reported. The Nigerian Government only gave some information about what happened this Friday, one day after the mass kidnapping took place. The authorities do not even have an official number of missing people after this episode. "At Kuriga secondary school there are 187 missing, while at the primary school, 125 children were missing but 25 returned," a government official told AFP.
