Gunmen kidnapped 15 pupils from their Islamic seminary in northwestern Sokoto State on Saturday, March 9. "The gunmen were passing by the school with a woman they kidnapped from another part of town and the pupils were awoken by her cries," said Liman Abubakar, the head of the seminary. "The bandits seized 15 of the pupils, aged between eight and 14, and took them away along with the woman," he added.
Kabiru Dauda, a member of the Sokoto state parliament from the region confirmed the abductions. "I received a call early this morning from my constituency that bandits had taken 15 pupils from a seminary," he said. Police officials in the state did not respond to inquiries, which came hours before the state government launched a volunteer force to fight bandits in the state.
Already Friday, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent troops to rescue more than 250 pupils kidnapped by gunmen from a school in the northwest, one of the largest mass abductions in three years.
Northwest and central Nigeria for years have been terrorized by criminal gangs. Known as bandits, they raid villages, kidnap and kill residents as well burn homes after looting them. The gangs, who maintain camps in a vast forest, are also notorious for mass abductions from schools to extract ransom from parents and governments.
Informal Islamic seminaries that teach the Koran are common in majority Muslim northern Nigeria, where the students live largely on alms and menial jobs.
Kidnappings have been on the rise in the northwest. Victims are usually released after ransom payment by their relations, but those who fail to pay are killed by their captors, their bodies abandoned in the bush. The criminal gangs are motivated by financial gains and have no ideological leaning. But the authorities and analysts are concerned about their increasing alliance with the jihadists waging a 15 year old rebellion to establish a Caliphate in the northeast.