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Armed attackers have seized in excess of 300 schoolchildren and staff in one of the largest mass kidnappings in recent Nigerian experience, as reported by a Christian organization on the weekend.

Growing Emergency in School Facilities

The pre-dawn Friday attack on St Mary's co-educational school in Niger state came just a short time after armed men stormed a secondary school in adjacent Kebbi state, abducting 25 young women.

Initial reports had stated 227 individuals were taken, but updated numbers surfaced after a comprehensive verification exercise established that 303 pupils and 12 educators had been abducted.

The kidnapped students, aged between eight and 18 years, constitute nearly 50 percent of the school's total student body of 629.

Official Reaction and Safety Actions

Local authorities have stated that intelligence agencies and law enforcement are presently performing a thorough census to verify the precise number of missing people.

In reaction to the increasing safety concerns, the state government has mandated the shutting of every schools in the state, with neighboring states following similar preventive measures.

Furthermore, the national education ministry has directed the provisional closure of 47 residential high schools across the country.

President Bola Tinubu has cancelled overseas engagements, including participation at the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to concentrate on managing the crisis.

Recent Violent Events

The educational institution abductions represent the latest in a sequence of safety breaches that have rocked the country, including an attack on a church in the west of Nigeria where gunmen shot dead two people and seized numerous worshipers during a online broadcast service.

These incidents have occurred against the background of global attention on Nigeria's security situation.

Past Background

Nigeria continues to be scarred by the memory of the mass kidnapping of almost 300 female students by jihadist group Boko Haram in Chibok more than a decade ago, with some of those victims still missing.

Firsthand Accounts

In a concerning video clip shared by religious groups, a frightened employee described hearing the sounds of motorcycles and cars before hearing "forceful banging" on various entrances of the compound.

"Students were screaming," the staff member said, recounting her fear while looking for keys to the section where the crying was loudest.

The local Catholic authority confirmed that the "attackers operated violently and without interruption for almost three hours, searching sleeping quarters."

Citizen Response and Fears

Meanwhile, about 600km away on the periphery of Abuja, concerned guardians were picking up their children from schools following the closure directive.

One mother, a 40-year-old healthcare worker, voiced her disbelief at the scale of the kidnapping, asking how 300 children could be taken at once.

She stated that the "authorities is not doing enough to address the security crisis," and expressed support for international assistance to "resolve this situation."

Continuing Safety Challenges

For a long time, heavily armed bandit groups have been carrying out killings and kidnappings for ransom in remote areas of northwest and middle Nigeria, where government control is limited.

While no group has taken credit for the latest attacks, criminal groups seeking ransom payments often attack schools in rural areas where protection is inadequate.

These groups maintain camps in vast forest areas straddling multiple states in the west of Nigeria.

Although these bandits have no political motives and are mainly motivated by monetary profit, their increasing alliance with extremist groups from the northeastern region has become a significant source of concern for officials and experts alike.