Nigeria searches for 25 schoolgirls kidnapped by armed men

A top Nigerian general has ordered his troops to fight "day and night" to rescue 25 schoolgirls abducted in the northwest.

The early Monday morning raid on a secondary school in Kebbi State was the latest in a string of abductions of schoolchildren in northern Nigeria, more than a decade after Boko Haram's kidnapping of 276 girls in the northeast sparked international uproar.

"You must continue day and night fighting. We must find these children," Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, recently promoted to chief of army staff, told troops deployed to Kebbi State on Monday.

Shaibu urged the soldiers to "leave no stone unturned" in the search for the schoolgirls.

Scaled up the fence

Though police rushed to the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the town of Maga, the gang had managed to scale the fence took away with the students after killing the school's deputy principal.

"We give them our words that we do everything possible to ensure that their children are being rescued," Kebbi State Governor Nasir Idris told broadcasters while on a visit to Maga late on Monday.

Amina Hassan, the widow of the murdered deputy principal, Hassan Makuku, told Nigerian television that she had tried to wake her husband up after hearing noise outside their house at 3:30 am (0230 GMT), before the gunmen burst in.

"We started struggling with them and one of them pulled out his gun and shot my husband, then he dragged me by my hand outside the house and I told them to leave me alone, that I would not go with them since they have killed the father of my children," Hassan said.

Took daughter away

"I was still arguing with them when my daughter came out, then they left me and went to her and took her with them," she said, adding that her daughter managed to escape into the bush after the attackers got distracted by the schoolgirls.

Kebbi is located in the country's majority-Muslim north.

Monday's raid was the second mass school abduction in Kebbi in four years, following a June 2021 incident when bandits took more than 100 students and staff members from a government college.

Those students were released in groups over two years after parents raised ransoms.