Gunmen abduct 25 girls from a high school in northwestern Nigeria
[November 18, 2025]
By OPE ADETAYO and DYEPKAZAH SHIBAYAN
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern
Nigeria before dawn on Monday, taking 25 schoolgirls and killing at
least one staffer, authorities said of the latest abduction of students
in the region.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for abducting the girls from
the boarding school in Kebbi state and their motivation was unclear.
Nigeria is facing a multidimensional security challenge, specifically
from amorphous groups of armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping for
ransoms — sometimes totaling thousands of dollars — and have been
responsible for several high-profile abductions across Nigeria’s
northern region. Kidnappings, attacks on villages and along major roads
have become common because of the limited security presence.
Those bandits are not connected to militant groups such as Boko Haram
and the splinter group Islamic State West Africa Province, whose attacks
on communities and government installations are motivated by religion.
Police said the boarding schoolgirls were taken from their dorms at 4
a.m. Monday. The school is in Maga, in the state's Danko-Wasagu area,
police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi said.
The assailants were armed with “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged
fire with guards before abducting the girls, Kotarkoshi said.
“A combined team is currently combing suspected escape routes and
surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed
at recovering the abducted students and arresting the perpetrators,” the
spokesperson said.
Kotarkoshi said one person was killed and another was injured, but a
resident who said his daughter and granddaughter were abducted in the
raid believes the death toll stands at two.
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The dormitories where gunmen kidnapped school children is seen in
Kebbi, Nigeria, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Deeni Jibo)
“We were told that the attackers entered the school with many
motorcycles. They first went straight to the teacher’s house and
killed him before killing the guard,” said Abdulkarim Abdullahi Maga.
Police did not respond to an Associated Press call seeking
confirmation of a second death.
Armed groups have targeted school children in the region since 2014,
when Boko Haram abducted 276 students from Chibok in Borno state.
That abduction marked the beginning of a new era of fear, and dozens
remain in captivity.
Since the Chibok abductions, at least 1,500 students have been
kidnapped, as armed groups increasingly find in abductions a
lucrative way to fund other crimes and control villages in the
nation’s mineral-rich but poorly policed region. In March 2024, more
than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two
weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state of Kaduna.
Nonetheless, raids on schools have subsided in recent years as state
governments implemented security measures in hot spots, including
closing schools for an extended period of time.
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Freelance journalist Mohammed Ibrahim in Kaduna, Nigeria,
contributed.
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