“Schools are supposed to be sanctuaries of learning and growth, not sites of fear and violence,” UNICEF Nigeria director Cristian Munduate said in a statement.Nigeria’s armed forces are fighting on several fronts, including against armed criminals in the northwest and a long-running jihadist insurgency in the northeast that has killed 40,000 and displaced more than two million since 2009.Fighting in Borno has eased as militants have been pushed back from the territory they once controlled, but they still carry out attacks, kidnappings and raids in remote areas.Last September, gunmen abducted more than 30 people, including 24 female students, in a raid around a university in northwest Zamfara State.In February 2021, bandits raided a girls’ boarding school in the town of Jangebe in Zamfara, kidnapping around 300 students.Months earlier, gunmen snatched more than 300 students from a boys school in Kankara in Katsina state before releasing them days later.Between July 2022 and June 2023, 3,620 people were abducted in 582 kidnap-related incidents in Nigeria, according to local risk analysts SBM Intelligence. It has recorded 4,777 people abducted since Tinubu took office in May last year.
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