Gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 students and teachers in one of the most significant mass kidnappings in recent Nigerian times, as stated by a religious organization on Saturday.
The Friday morning assault on St Mary's co-educational school in western Nigeria happened just days after armed men invaded a high school in adjacent Kebbi state, seizing 25 female students.
Earlier reports had stated 227 individuals were seized, but updated numbers surfaced after a thorough verification exercise established that 303 pupils and 12 instructors had been kidnapped.
The taken pupils, aged between eight and 18 years, constitute nearly 50 percent of the school's overall student body of 629.
State officials have confirmed that security departments and law enforcement are presently conducting a thorough census to verify the exact number of abducted individuals.
In reaction to the growing security fears, the state government has ordered the shutting of every schools in the region, with neighboring states following similar precautionary steps.
Additionally, the federal education department has directed the provisional closure of 47 residential high schools across the country.
President Bola Tinubu has cancelled overseas commitments, including attendance at the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to concentrate on addressing the situation.
The school kidnappings constitute the most recent in a series of security incidents that have shaken the country, including an attack on a church in the west of Nigeria where gunmen shot dead two individuals and seized numerous congregation members during a live-streamed service.
These events have occurred against the backdrop of international attention on Nigeria's safety situation.
Nigeria continues to be traumatized by the legacy of the large-scale kidnapping of nearly 300 female students by jihadist group Boko Haram in Chibok over a decade ago, with several of those victims still unaccounted for.
In a concerning video clip shared by Christian groups, a distraught employee described hearing the noise of motorcycles and cars before experiencing "forceful banging" on various entrances of the compound.
"Children were screaming," the witness reported, recounting her terror while searching for keys to the section where the crying was loudest.
The local Catholic authority stated that the "assailants operated violently and without interruption for nearly three hours, searching sleeping quarters."
Meanwhile, about 600km away on the outskirts of Abuja, concerned guardians were collecting their students from schools following the shutdown directive.
One parent, a 40-year-old healthcare worker, expressed her disbelief at the scale of the kidnapping, asking how 300 students could be taken simultaneously.
She concluded that the "government is failing to act to curb insecurity," and voiced support for external assistance to "resolve this situation."
For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have been carrying out murders and abductions for ransom in rural areas of northern and central Nigeria, where government control is minimal.
While no group has claimed responsibility for the latest incidents, criminal groups demanding ransom payments often attack schools in countryside locations where security is weak.
These gangs maintain camps in vast woodland areas straddling several states in western Nigeria.
Although these bandits have no political motives and are mainly driven by financial gain, their increasing alliance with jihadist groups from the northeastern region has become a significant source of concern for authorities and experts alike.
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