MINNA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s government says security forces have rescued 100 students seized last month from St. Mary’s Catholic School in the Papiri community of Niger state. At the same time, at least 150 other Nigerian kidnapped schoolchildren and 12 teachers remain in captivity after one of the country’s largest mass abductions in recent years, officials said Dec. 8, 2025.
Authorities have not disclosed whether the children were freed through negotiations, ransom payments, or a military operation, a lack of detail that has fueled public frustration and fresh doubts about how the state is confronting kidnapping gangs.
The freed students, aged roughly 10 to 17, were brought in white buses to the Niger Government House in Minna, where officials hugged some of them and posed for photographs at a government-organized ceremony. Many appeared “lost but relieved,” according to an Associated Press report that described children arriving in football jerseys, robes, and plastic slippers after weeks in captivity.
Niger state Gov. Mohammed Bago said health workers would examine the group before they are returned to Papiri. “To those who have been praying, please continue to pray,” he told officials and clergy in Minna, adding that the state hopes to recover every remaining child still being held deep in the forest.
Parents in Papiri, however, say they have received little direct information. Some told reporters they first saw video of the ceremony on television and social media and still do not know whether their sons or daughters are among those freed. “I’m just worried about his safety,” said Samuel Musa, whose 13-year-old son is still missing, echoing the anxiety of families of Nigerian kidnapped schoolchildren spread across the rural community.
The mass abduction began before dawn on Nov. 21, when gunmen stormed St. Mary’s Catholic School and forced more than 300 students and 12 staff into the bush at gunpoint. At least 50 children escaped in the hours that followed, according to earlier coverage that cited church officials. Later counts from state authorities and church leaders put the total number of abducted pupils at a minimum of 303, with the latest rescue still leaving roughly half of them unaccounted for.
In a statement welcoming the rescue, President Bola Tinubu praised security agencies and insisted that “all the students and other abducted Nigerians” must be brought home. He has previously said children should no longer be “sitting ducks” for armed gangs, a message repeated as federal and state officials face mounting pressure over the Nigerian kidnapped schoolchildren case and other recent abductions.
New details from a Reuters dispatch suggest the released group spent much of their captivity sleeping on tarpaulins in the open, under guard in forest camps. Some of the abducted children were as young as six, rights advocates say, underscoring how vulnerable remote boarding schools in northern Nigeria remain despite years of promises to secure them.
For many Nigerians, the Papiri attack revives memories of earlier school kidnappings that shocked the world but never fully stopped. In 2014, Boko Haram militants abducted 276 girls from a government school in Chibok, Borno state, an episode now widely known as the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. A decade later, dozens of those girls are still missing, and rights groups estimate that more than 1,500 students have been abducted nationwide since then.
Armed “bandit” groups have also been active in the northwest and north-central states, including the 2021 Zamfara school kidnapping in which 279 girls were taken from a boarding school in Jangebe and later released after secretive negotiations. Analysts say the pattern in these cases—mass abduction, opaque talks, and little transparency about ransoms or arrests—has encouraged criminal gangs who see schoolchildren as profitable targets.
The Papiri raid itself marked an escalation in that trend. It followed attacks in neighboring Kebbi and Kwara states, where dozens of schoolchildren and churchgoers were also seized and later freed, part of a broader wave that has forced hundreds of schools across northern Nigeria to close. In the latest Nigeria kidnapped schoolchildren case, families and activists say they want more than celebrations: they are demanding credible investigations, public accounting of any ransom payments, and concrete steps to protect classrooms.
International pressure is building as well. A visiting U.S. congressional delegation has discussed plans for a joint Nigeria-U.S. task force to tackle terrorism and kidnapping, lawmakers told reporters, pointing to the Niger state rescue as a rare example of success while warning that much more needs to be done.
For now, the return of 100 students offers a moment of relief in Minna and Papiri. But with at least 150 Nigerian kidnapped schoolchildren and their teachers still believed to be in the hands of kidnappers, the country’s long-running school abduction crisis is far from over.
