Nigerian general orders 'day and night' search for kidnapped schoolgirl

LAGOS — A top Nigerian general has ordered his troops to fight "day and night" to rescue 25 schoolgirls abducted in the northwest, riven by jihadists and criminal gangs.

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 infamous kidnapping of 276 girls in the northeast sparked international uproar.

"You must continue day and night fighting. We must find these children," Major 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.

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

Kebbi is caught between the jihadist threat from neighbouring Niger and the scourge of criminal gangs who loot villages while ransoming, kidnapping and killing residents across the north of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

Many of those criminals, known locally as "bandits", have bases in the Zamfara forest near Maga.

"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.

'Dragged me outside' 

Amina Hassan, the wife of the murdered vice-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.

"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.

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 batches over two years after parents raised ransoms. Some of the students were forcefully married off and returned with babies.

US President Donald Trump has threatened military intervention over what he claims are the killing of Christians in Nigeria, a narrative which the Nigerian government has rejected.

Nigeria is the scene of numerous conflicts, including jihadist insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.

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