By Yunusa Umar
The Federal Government (FG) has vowed a decisive and coordinated response to the abduction of several female students from Government Girls Secondary School, Maga, in the Danko/Wasagu Local Government Area of Kebbi State.
The New Daily Prime earlier reported that bandits stormed the school in the early hours of Monday, kidnapping an unspecified number of students.
In a statement issued on Monday, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said the government was deeply concerned and stood in solidarity with the victims’ families.
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He assured them that every necessary step was being taken to secure the safe return of the schoolgirls.
“The government fully shares in the pain and anxiety of the affected families and communities. He stressed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, considers the protection of every Nigerian, particularly schoolchildren, as a sacred duty of the State.
“The government condemns, in the strongest terms, this reprehensible attack on innocent students and the killing of school officials who were performing their noble duties,” he said.
According to the Minister, security and intelligence agencies have been given firm directives to immediately track down the kidnappers, rescue the girls unharmed, and ensure that all perpetrators are brought to justice.
He emphasised that the FG would not relent until the abducted students were safely reunited with their families.
Reaffirming security as a top national priority, Idris disclosed that efforts were ongoing to strengthen the country’s internal security architecture.
This includes recalibrating military operations, improving police capabilities, and upgrading intelligence-gathering systems to boost both prevention and rapid response to threats nationwide.
He also highlighted Nigeria’s increasing collaboration with regional bodies, including ECOWAS, the African Union and the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), to better secure the nation’s borders and dismantle terrorist and criminal networks operating within and across the subregion.
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Idris urged Nigerians to remain calm yet vigilant, expressing confidence that the combined efforts of national security institutions and regional partners would yield positive results.
“The Federal Government reassures the citizens that it remains fully committed to protecting lives, securing communities, and defeating the menace of terrorism and violent crime in all forms,” he said.
Enter Amnesty International
However, Amnesty International Nigeria, in a statement on Monday, expressed shock over the FG’s failure to protect citizens from escalating armed group attacks.
“Mass abductions in Nigeria early today of more than 25 school girls at GGCSS Maga, Kebbi State, is a shocking indictment of the authorities’ persistent failure to protect people from attacks by armed groups that have killed thousands of Nigerians in the last decade.
“Our findings show that the girls were abducted by gunmen who invaded the school around 5:00am today. The gunmen killed the security guard and the vice principal of the school. At gunpoint, they forced someone living in the school’s staff quarters to show them the girls’ hostel”, said the group.
Amnesty added that the latest mass abduction further demonstrates that President Bola Tinubu’s government has no effective plan to end years of atrocities by armed groups and gunmen who continue to operate with alarming freedom across many parts of Nigeria.
“Whatever security measures are being implemented by President Tinubu and his government are clearly not working. The organisation is calling on the Nigerian government to take all necessary measures to ensure the safe release and return of the girls abducted to their families.
“Authorities must also promptly, thoroughly, impartially, independently, effectively, and transparently investigate the recurring cases of abductions in many parts of the country, make public the findings of any investigation and ensure that the suspected perpetrators are brought to justice in fair trials”.
The organisation noted that authorities had repeatedly failed to establish effective security frameworks for schools in high-risk areas, despite the abduction of hundreds of schoolchildren over the years.
These failures, it said, had contributed to declining school enrolment and posed a major setback to girls’ education.
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Amnesty urged Nigerian authorities to comply with the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, to which the country is a state party, stressing that children have the right to both protection and education.
It called for immediate and concrete measures to prevent further abductions, which it warned were fast becoming the norm.
