Nigeria searches for abducted schoolgirls as gunmen attack church

Nigeria’s security situation has come under the international spotlight – Copyright AFP/File Joris Bolomey

Security forces were scouring western Nigeria for two dozen kidnapped schoolgirls on Wednesday, a day after gunmen stormed a church service, killing two people in an attack captured on video.

Nigerian security forces have been placed on high alert, the information minister said, as the country faces an uncomfortable spotlight on its security situation.

The armed forces are still searching for 24 schoolgirls abducted by unidentified armed men from a secondary school in the northwestern town of Maga in Kebbi state during the night of Sunday to Monday.

One of the girls managed to escape, authorities said, but the school’s vice-principal was killed.

In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during a service that was recorded and broadcast online.

Both the church attack and girls’ abduction come after US President Donald Trump earlier this month threatened military action over what he described as the killing of Nigeria’s Christians, a narrative rejected by the Nigerian government.

In response to the violence, President Bola Tinubu “has put our nation’s security apparatuses on the highest alert ever, and has deployed to actively pursue and eliminate terrorists, bandits and criminal elements wherever they may be in Nigeria”, Information Minister Mohammed Idris said.

Vice-President Kashim Shettima travelled to Kebbi state on Wednesday to meet the victims’ families and coordinate the security response with local authorities.

“We’ll use every instrument of the state to bring these girls home and ensure that the perpetrators of this wickedness pay the full weight of justice,” he told an assembly in the presence of the state governor, according to videos on local media.

– Security cooperation –

The latest attack took place at a church in the town of Eruku in Kwara state on Tuesday and was filmed by a church camera recording the service.

The video shows the service being interrupted by gunfire and children are heard screaming outside. An armed man is seen chasing worshippers, while others steal people’s belongings.

Eruku police, “in collaboration with vigilantes, swiftly responded to the sound of gunshots emanating from the outskirts of the town, prompting the hoodlums to flee into the bush”, the Kwara state police said in a statement.

Two men were killed in the attack and a third was wounded, it said.

Kwara state Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq’s office said he had sought the “immediate deployment of more security operatives” to the area.

Several hours earlier, Tinubu had confirmed the death of an army brigadier general, wounded and abducted after a recent ambush in Borno state.

Musa Uba was the highest-ranking military official to die in the long-running conflict with jihadists since 2021.

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

American conservatives have seized upon violence in Nigeria to push a message that Christians are being targeted in the West African country.

Nigeria, which denies the allegations of Christian killings, says it is partaking in security cooperation talks with the US government.

Africa’s most populous country is divided between a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north.

State police said the abducted children in the recent secondary school attack were all Muslim.

Kwara state has suffered a series of attacks in recent months, prompting Nigeria’s president in October to deploy military personnel to flush out criminal gang bases in the state’s forests.

The gangs, known locally as bandits, loot villages while ransoming, kidnapping and killing residents across the north of Nigeria. They regularly target churches and mosques.