Authorities reported on Tuesday that a group of gunmen in Kaduna state had abducted eight secondary school students and an unknown number of others as they were leaving school, in the latest in a series of similar kidnappings. Violent attacks have been carried out by armed gangs primarily in remote areas of northwest Nigeria, targeting villages, schools, and motorists, and resulting in the abduction of hundreds for ransom. Samuel Aruwan, internal security commissioner in Kaduna, stated that the eight students were taken by the gunmen from Awon Government Secondary School in the Kachia local government area of southern Kaduna on Monday, after they had previously kidnapped other individuals.

Although it is unclear where the students were taken, it is common for kidnappers to hold victims in the forest and only release them once a ransom has been paid. Aruwan stated that the school had provided the names and classes of the kidnapped students.

The military has been preoccupied with combating a prolonged Islamist insurgency in the northeast, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with the kidnapping gangs commonly known as bandits, Reuters reviewed.