IN the early hours of Monday November 17, terrorists walked into Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, and abducted 26 female students, two of who later escaped. They spent over two hours in the school after navigating through several military security checkpoints. The ICIR digs into how the attackers got into the school, took time to operate and went away with their victims who were released on Tuesday November 25
FOURTEEN-year-old Hauwa’u Usman, a JSS 3 student, has not forgotten the horror she experienced that Monday night. As she recounts how she escaped the bandits who abducted her and dozens of her schoolmates, she wished the memories would be erased from her consciousness.
When the kidnappers stormed the Aliero Hostel that night, she was asleep on her lower bunk, along with 25 other female students in room 3.
The girls woke up to the voices of the terrorists who commanded them out of the room. Those who hesitated were beaten and forced out.
Hauwa’u remembered one girl crying and pleading with the men not to take her, but they forced her to move. Room Three, like the other rooms, had at least 15 bunk beds, each with two sleeping spaces – upper and lower.
The room also had a corner that led to four student toilets and an area where broken or unused bunk frames were kept.
When the gunmen stormed the hostel, the students who woke up quickly tried to hide in these spaces, but they were soon forced out. The attackers took strategic positions once inside the hostel premises. The ICIR learnt that they entered Aliero hostel block through its back gate and went straight to Room Three, which is closest to the exit door.
The other hostel blocks, namely Dakin Gari House, Kyabu House, Kwalanga House, Bala Grady House and Atiku House, were spared during the attack.
Hauwa’u was among those marched out of the hostel building, then passed through the house of late Hassan Yakubu, the school security master who was killed earlier in the attack.
There, the kidnappers ordered the girls to squat and wait while they regrouped. Moments later, they moved again, toward the school gate, shooting sporadically as they tried to force it open.
When the main gate wouldn’t give way, they used the small pedestrian entrance and pushed the girls across the main road to the opposite side.
Contrary to viral news of the abduction claiming 25 students were in captivity, The ICIR gathered that 24 students were taken into in captivity. Initially the bandits had moved 26 students out of the school, however, Hawa’u and one other girl escaped as walked out of the school gate.
Minutes before hostel invasion Yakubu’s unfortunate killing
The school security master, Hassan Yakubu, and his family, were asleep when the bandits crept into the compound around 3 a.m. on Monday, November 17.
They jumped in through a section of the fence that leads directly into Yakubu’s backyard. The circumstances showed that it was a targeted and coordinated attempt to first take out the chief security officer of the school before going on with their mission.
Yakubu’s wife was the first to sense something was wrong. Half-asleep, she heard movements near the window. Thinking an animal had wandered in, she nudged her husband and suggested the goat might have entered through an unlocked front door. Yakubu, who also doubled as the school economics teacher, exhausted from the day, did not wake.
The steps grew louder and the next thing the wife heard was a knock on their door. The bandits had already slipped through the first entrance. “I shook him again and told him, ‘They have come. The bandits are here,’ his wife recalled.
When Yakubu got up to open the door, the gunmen shoved him aside. They asked immediately if he was Hassan Yakubu. When he confirmed his identity, he was told that they had been sent to kill him. Yakubu then stood up and said his last prayer. His wife, trembling, tried to plead for him, but the husband asked her to also say her last prayer.
He was shot. Yakubu died instantly after the bullet pierced through his chest.
The gunfire jolted the security operatives at the main entrance awake. One of the security men told The ICIR he had sensed trouble earlier before the shot. He explained that dogs in the neighbourhood were barking non-stop and also recalled how a guinea fowl from Yakubu’s backyard suddenly flew into the next compound, clasping its wings hard enough to make the guard look toward the staff quarters.
“I flashed my torchlight toward the house. I saw light inside and thought Mallam Hassan was awake,” he said. “Then I heard a gunshot. I ran to inform my colleague that they have killed Mallam.”
That first gunshot, The ICIR learnt, set off a wave of gunfire around the school. It was after Yakubu was killed that the bandits were now positioned towards the other side of the school. The terrorists also spread towards the other staff quarters in the school holding them hostages and shooting to scare them from making attempts to flee their house.
They then moved toward the opposite side of the compound where two police officers were stationed at the gate and another two positioned at the other side of the staff quarters.
“They were many,” one of the security officers said, adding, “I couldn’t even count them.”
“After the first gunshot, we tried to move closer to see what happened, but they shot in our direction immediately. I was holding an AK-47, but I couldn’t shoot first. If I did, they would know exactly where I was. I only fired after they fired. But we were overpowered.”
One of these bullets caught the school security guard and was confirmed dead after.
During the visit to the school, The ICIR saw traces of bullets and the five holes on the school main gate and another three holes on the fence holding the school gate.
Movement into the bush
After the kidnappers pushed the girls across the main road to the opposite side, they continued moving in a tight formation, the same way they had been forced through the small pedestrian gate after failing to open the main entrance.
The area they were taken toward lies on the northern edge of Maga and leads to River Ka, which separates the community from Bukuyum LGA of Zamfara State.
“Immediately we went out, I managed to hide myself,” she told. As soon as they left, I returned to the school.”
Hauwa’u said she remembered one of them holding a torchlight. They came on foot, not on motorcycles, as some reports suggested.
Military personnel left 12 hours before attack
The ICIR gathered that around 4 p.m. on Sunday, November 16, military personnel stationed at the entrance of Maga arrived at the attacked school for what appeared to be a security inspection after the intel received by the school authority.
They walked through the school compound with the late security master, Yakubu visiting classrooms and even stepping into the girls’ hostel.
According to information gathered by The ICIR, the soldiers snapped photographs during the visit to document their presence.
The school principal Rabi Magaji explained that he had received calls around 3pm on Sunday from the State Security Service, SSS, of their plan to deploy troops to the school, adding that the officers at Maga military checkpoint came few minutes after for the said security inspection.
Students who spoke to The ICIR noted that they felt a renewed sense of confidence that the school was safe and eventually went to bed with the impression that the worst would not happen that night.
But the military personnel left long before the attack, according to multiple sources who had a firsthand experience of the attack.
However, there were conflicting reports about the exact time the personnel departed, with some media platforms claiming they left 45 minutes before the attack while others suggested around midnight. Several people who witnessed the incident, including staff, security guards and students, insisted the soldiers withdrew not long after completing the evening inspection.
Their departure, they said, left the school exposed.
GGCSS surrounded by checkpoints
Between the time the armed men invaded the school, killed the school security officer, barricaded the staff quarters, exchanged gunfire with the mobile police officers on duty, stormed the girls’ hostel and forced the students out through the gate toward the bush path, The ICIR gathered that they spent over two hours inside the school.
Survivors, including the students, staff and the security sources, said despite a security checkpoint close to the town entrance, the military only came after they had left with the girls.
The ICIR findings show that at least two military checkpoints were close to the school.
Just as you enter the town from Zamfara, there’s a checkpoint that sits barely two minutes’ drive (on a motorcycle) from the school gate. During a visit The ICIR reporter could count at least seven officers at the checkpoint.
The school principal said she first learned of the attack around 4 a.m. when a staff member called her. Yakubu’s wife had run to the staff quarters moments after her husband was killed, and her daughter taken to lead the attackers to the hostel.
The staff member immediately alerted the principal, who in turn reached for her phone and contacted the officer in charge at the nearby checkpoint.
According to her, she informed the officer that armed men were inside the school and had already shot and killed a staff. But she said the officer told her that his team had “just left the school.” The principal said she tried to suggest they might still be within the vicinity or monitoring movement, but the officer repeated that his men “just left.”
At the time she made the call, The ICIR gathered that the terrorists were still inside the hostel. They remained inside the school for roughly another hour, regrouping and organising the students, before eventually marching them out through the small pedestrian gate.
“The military security men didn’t come again. They didn’t come until when those people had left,” the principal added.
Just after the Maga checkpoint lies another, much bigger military base in Dan Marke. Although it falls under Zamfara State, The ICIR confirmed that the base is less than ten minutes’ drive on vehicle from the school.
Four days after the attack, The ICIR observed a military truck and two Hilux vehicles at the base, with several officers manning different positions.
After operating for over two hours, terrorists escaped on foot. Findings by The ICIR reveal that Maga, where the kidnapping occurred, is less than 5 kilometres away from part of the Bukuyum LGA, on the highway.
Oftentimes when similar attacks happened, the terrorists avoided the usual roads and moved the children through the dense forest, likely extending the journey beyond the estimated kilometres.
In the case of Maga, the terrorists moved the students through the northern part of the town inside a bush that leads to River Ka. The river, The ICIR learnt, separates the town from Bukuyum and Anka LGA of Zamfara State.
Sources claimed that after crossing the river, the terrorists moved down east where they would have moved towards Merina, a forest in Bukuyum LGA.
Maga district head, Muhammad Dantani, said there are several checkpoints across the path leading to Bukuyum that the bandits might have crossed, including that of Dan Marke.
“We are bordering Zamfara State; at the eastern part of the town is 3km to Gadarzaima. The northern part is 3km to the river Ka. That’s what demarcates Zamfara and Kebbi States at this axis,” he said.
However, it was gathered the abductors avoided the checkpoint mounted in Dan Marke and followed through the other route that leads to the Turare. According to our findings, there are at least four crossing points by the terrorists from or to Marina Forest from the highway.
A conflict reporter Abdullahi Abubakar, based in Zamfara, who has a network of sources in the area, said the terror group slept in the bush for two days before passing through the Turare crossing point on Wednesday, November 19. Turare is widely known as a major herders’ route between Bukkuyum and the neighbouring LGAs, including Anka, where a major terrorist kingpin Muhammad Gwaska is terrorising.
Recently Gwaska reportedly struck a peace deal with over 30 communities in Anka.
Safe school project proves no impact
Despite billions poured into the Safe Schools Initiative over the past decade, the attack on the Maga school shows how little protection many vulnerable schools actually have, according to analysts.
During its visit to GGCSS, Maga, the presence of some SSI-related structures, including four Mobile Police officers stationed on the grounds and a school security master was seen. It was also observed a barbed wire topping on the girls’ hostel fence, a project done by the state government according to the school principal.
However, the response capacity was grossly ineffective as terrorists still moved in and out of the school for nearly two hours without meaningful resistance.
Since 2014, the safe school’s initiative has attracted more than N100 billion in donations from international partners and private contributors, alongside a N15 billion federal allocation in 2023 alone.
Independent analysis also showed that more than 1,000 of those abductions occurred under three successive administrations. During this period, at least 17 school attacks occurred in 10 northern states, with Kebbi now recording two major incidents.
The ICIR had reported how over 96 students, and eight teachers were abducted by bandits at Federal Government College, Birnin Yauri, Kebbi State in June2021.
When The ICIR met Khadijat Muhammad and Zainatu Kaka at their family homes in Maga, the fear of that night was still fresh in their voices.
Both girls live in the Bala Grady hostel block of the school. Although the block was adjacent the Aliero block, the attackers did not enter. But even from a distance, the experience was traumatising.
Muhammad said she heard the voices of students and that of gunshot that night but could only pray that the attackers would not enter their building.
“After hearing gunshots from our hostel, we brought out torchlights and started flashing but the matron instructed us to calm down. We didn’t know where the shots were coming from, so we started observing morning prayer but the soldiers already outside asked us to pray inside, “she said.
Now in her home, she said she might only return to school if it is no longer a boarding school because she can no longer imagine sleeping in a hostel after what happened.
Kaka who slept in a different room in the same block, said she did not realise an attack had happened at all. She woke before dawn as usual, preparing for school, unaware that gunmen had stormed another hostel block and taken dozens of her classmates.
It was only when she stepped outside and saw other students running back into their rooms that she sensed something was wrong. Speaking from her home, Muhammad who wished to become a nurse or medical doctor, told The ICIR that her grandmother has decided she will not return to the school.
“My grandmother told me I won’t be going back to school because it’s not safe any longer.”
Students regain freedom after parents’ plea
A week after their abduction, The ICIR reports that the abducted 24 students have rogained freedom.
The students were said to be ‘freed’ and ‘released’ by the bandits following federal government intervention. Details of their release were yet to be provided by press time.
A viral video of the terror group has also surfaced, showing the armed men were taunting the students and claiming the government was unable to rescue them before their release on Monday, November 25,
The bandits attributed their release to intervention by some ‘elders,’ adding that, “You will be handed over through dialogue and negotiation. It was not force that was used.”
In the days following the abduction of the students, Ilyasu Sani was still reeling from the pain of losing four of his children to the kidnappers.
Sani had sent the four girls to GGCSS just like he did for those before them, hoping they would actualise their dreams of becoming medical doctors in the future, but then he could only wish to hold their hands back.
“Since these my children are girls, I have wished that if they graduate, if I have the means to take them abroad, they will study in fields like doctoring.”
He explained that all her daughters performed outstandingly in their respective classes, noting that in the last session they topped their classes.
The ICIR gathered that across the community, five other households carried the same burden. Another parent, Umar Garba, whose daughter Amina was among those kidnapped, explained that her daughter is calm and the type that ‘doesn’t fight anybody.”
“It’s only unfortunate she’s among those abducted,” he said with a breaking voice. “She has very good ambition to further her education after the secondary school.”
Soldiers’ withdrawal to be investigated
The Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, on November 22, said soldiers who allegedly abandoned their duty posts before abduction at GGCSS were being interrogated by the Nigerian Army.
Matawalle, who arrived in Birnin Kebbi on President Bola Tinubu’s directives to coordinate efforts to secure the girls’ release, said the military did not authorise any withdrawal from the school.
His reaction followed Governor Nasir Idris demand for explanations from military authorities over the alleged withdrawal.
Read the terror series here
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M