Freed Nigerian schoolchildren to be reunited with households

[ad_1] A closing group of 130 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren freed by the government on Sunday are anticipated to be reunited with their households within the central Niger state on Monday, ending a month-long ordeal that drew international concern.

Final month, unknown gunmen took an estimated 215 schoolchildren and 12 lecturers from St Mary’s Catholic college, Papiri group in Niger state, which runs west from the capital, Abuja, to neighbouring Benin.

Fifty kids escaped not lengthy after, and one other 100 had been launched on 7 December.

“One other 130 kidnapped Niger state pupils launched, none left in captivity,” the presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare posted on X on Sunday.

The final group of kids had been reportedly launched close to Nigeria’s border with Benin however as with the earlier launch, there was no point out of how they regained freedom or what group was behind the kidnapping. Different particulars additionally stay unclear.

Kidnap-for-ransom abductions signify one angle of Nigeria’s multifaceted safety crises. Gangs of armed bandits roam the huge countryside within the north, whereas jihadists function with exterior help from surrounding areas within the Sahel. The abundance of non-state actors has left rural areas significantly susceptible, and Nigeria’s under-equipped safety businesses proceed to be stretched.

The Papiri incident was the second mass abduction within the west African nation in every week, and the second in Niger state in 4 years, after a May 2021 abduction of 135 pupils from an Islamic seminary. Probably the most high-profile mass abduction stays the notorious 2014 kidnapping of greater than 200 schoolgirls from the city of Chibok in north-east Nigeria, which spurred a world marketing campaign supported by dozens of celebrities together with Michelle Obama and Elton John.

In accordance with the Lagos-based geopolitical advisory SBM Intelligence, there have been no less than 4,722 victims of kidnappings throughout Nigeria between July 2024 and June 2025, with no less than 762 individuals killed and about $1.66m paid as ransom in whole.

The deteriorating safety state of affairs has led to the US president, Donald Trump, to threaten army motion in Nigeria. The Trump administration has designated Nigeria as a rustic of specific concern, citing a “Christian genocide” – a framing that Abuja has repeatedly rejected as being an oversimplification of a posh disaster.