In Nigeria, 315 students and teachers were kidnapped from a Catholic school, according to a new report

Previous reports reported 227 kidnappings. The attack came days after the kidnapping by gunmen of 25 high school girls from Maga girls’ boarding school, in Kebbi state.

The number of victims continues to increase. A Christian association announced on Saturday, November 22, that the number of students and teachers kidnapped the day before at a Catholic school in central Nigeria had risen to 315, which was the second attack of this kind in a week in Africa’s most populous country. Friday morning’s raid on Saint Mary’s mixed school in central Nigeria’s Niger state came after a group of gunmen attacked a senior secondary school in neighboring Kebbi state on Monday and kidnapped 25 schoolgirls.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) revealed in a statement that it had revised its previous report of 227 abductions in Saint Mary “after verification exercise and final census”. “The total number of kidnapping victims (…) now reaches 303 students and 12 teachers”according to the association. This figure represents almost half of the school’s enrollment (629 students enrolled). Authorities in neighboring Katsina and Plateau states have ordered the closure of all schools as a precaution. President Bola Tinubu canceled his international commitments, including his participation in the G20 Summit in Johannesburg (South Africa), to address this crisis.

Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 young girls by Boko Haram jihadists in Chibok, Borno State, more than ten years ago. Some of them are still missing. As the country faces various security challenges, hostage-taking incidents are increasing nationwide. Although criminal gangs have no particular ideology and are motivated by financial gain, their increasingly close ties to jihadists in the northeast worry authorities and security analysts. For sixteen years, jihadists led an insurgency in the northeast of the country with the aim of establishing a caliphate.