In the northwest, armed rebels kidnapped 25 schoolgirls, and Nigerian forces were looking for them yesterday. This was the latest act of violence that President Donald Trump’s supporters have used to their advantage.
The early Monday morning raid on a secondary school in Kebbi State was the most recent kidnapping of kids in northern Nigeria, which is mostly Muslim. This happened more than ten years after Boko Haram’s infamous kidnapping of 276 girls in the northeast caused a worldwide uproar.
According to AFP, it got more attention from the US right after Trump threatened to send troops to Nigeria to protect Christians there.
“You have to keep battling day and night. Major General Waidi Shaibu, who was recently elevated to Chief of Army Staff, urged troops in Kebbi State, “We must find these children.”
Shaibu told the soldiers to “leave no stone unturned” in their search for the schoolgirls.
In the town of Maga, kidnappers climbed the fence at the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, killed the vice principal, and then took the kids.
Kebbi is stuck between the Islamic danger from Niger next door and criminal gangs who rob communities and kidnap and kill people all over the north of Africa’s most populous country.
President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria spoke out against the kidnapping yesterday and asked people in the area to give information to stop any prospective attacks.
In a statement from the presidency, he said he was “sad over the abduction of the schoolgirls,” which happened “despite intelligence warnings of a possible strike by the bandits.”
“I ask community leaders and people from all over the country, especially those in the theaters of operations, to share useful information.” We need your help to address these security problems.
– Tensions in the US –
Our reporter spoke with the Kebbi State police yesterday, and they said that all of the kidnapped youngsters were Muslim.
But US House of Representatives Republican Riley Moore said on X that his followers should pray for the 25 girls. This was similar to what Trump said about Christians being persecuted.
“We don’t know everything about this terrible attack, but we do know that it happened in a Christian area in Northern Nigeria,” Moore stated.
Trump said at the beginning of November that he had instructed the Pentagon to come up with a possible plan of attack in Nigeria because extreme Islamists are “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers.”
Nigeria has denied that assertion, saying that the country’s many security problems have killed more Muslims.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told our reporter that Nigeria was in negotiations with the US over security. He did not think that Washington would order a military strike.
There are a lot of wars going on in Nigeria, including jihadist uprisings that kill both Christians and Muslims, frequently without discrimination.
Yesterday, Tinubu said that Brigadier-General Musa Uba, who was in charge of the army’s operations against terrorists in the unstable Lake Chad region, was slain when jihadists took him in the northeast on Friday.
He is the highest-ranking commander to have died in the country’s long-running jihadist fight since 2021.
The Islamic State group’s West African offshoot, ISWAP, said they were behind the ambush.
The army reported that two other troops and two members of the militia were also slain.
– “Pulled Me Outside” –
Amina Hassan, the wife of the killed vice principal of the school, Hassan Makuku, told Nigerian TV that she had tried to wake her husband up after hearing noise outside their house at 3:30 a.m. (0230 GMT), before the gunmen broke in.
Hassan stated, “We started fighting with them, and one of them pulled out his gun and shot my husband. Then he dragged me outside the house by my hand.”
“I was still fighting with them when my daughter came out. Then they left me and went to her and took her with them,” she claimed. She also stated that her daughter was able to get away into the bush when the assailants weren’t paying attention.
The attack on Monday was the second large school kidnapping in Kebbi in four years. The first happened in June 2021, when bandits snatched more than 100 students and staff members from a government college.
Parents paid ransoms for those students, and they were released in groups over the course of two years. Some of the students were forced to get married and came back with infants.
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