THE Kogi State Police Command has confirmed the abduction of students by bandits during an attack on Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTEC) in Osara, Okene, Kogi, on Thursday, May 9.
In a text message sent to The ICIR on Friday, May 10, the command spokesperson, William Ovye Aya, said the state police commissioner, Bethrand Onuoha, had deployed tactical teams to rescue the students.
“Yes, there was an attack yesterday at the Confluence University Osara. CP has deployed tactical teams comprising the Police Mobile Force, Counter Terrorism, Quick Response Unit, Intelligence Units, and Anti-Kidnapping working in synergy with the military, DSS, local vigilantes, and hunters in trailing the hoodlums to rescue the victims and arrest the perpetrators,” he wrote.
The ICIR reports that a yet-to-be-disclosed number of students were abducted in the school on Thursday.
According to reports, eyewitness accounts indicate that the bandits swooped on the university around 9 pm while the students were doing night prep for their upcoming examinations.
A source told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the bandits entered through the forest and proceeded to enter three lecture halls, where they fired shots into the air to intimidate the students.
“They trapped the students inside the halls and started taking them; the school was thrown into total confusion as fear-stricken students in other halls hurried to safety, scampering in various directions.
“By the time local security guards and the conventional security men at the gate engaged the bandits, they had already succeeded in abducting some students.
“But the efforts minimised the damage as the attackers didn’t go beyond the first three halls,” the source said.
The source highlighted that the students were preparing for their first-semester examination set to begin on Monday, May 13, when the bandits carried out the raid.
Another student, who spoke to NAN anonymously, explained that he and some colleagues ran to the bush and hid there for over an hour.
The Cable also reported that a student, who was in ‘Class LR5’ with several other students for tutorials expressed shock upon hearing the initial gunshot, followed by several more in quick succession.
“We started scampering to safety and it appeared that the gunshots were coming from class LR3, where some students were also reading,” she said.
“I did not know where to run to. When I peeped through the window, I saw our security guard returning fire.”
School abductions drag
Abduction of students has become a source of concern in Nigeria, where the number of out-of-school children is very high.
In 2023, The ICIR reported that Nigeria had 19.7 million out-of-school children and was the country globally with the third highest number of children deprived of education according to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2020 Model Estimates.
On Thursday, March 7, 137 students and their principal were reportedly abducted by terrorists from the LEA Primary School in Kuriga, a community within the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
The incident generated public outcry, with several leaders, including President Bola Tinubu, calling for their immediate release.
Abduction of schoolchildren became common in Nigeria, especially in the North, after nearly 300 students were abducted by terrorists from a school in Chibok, Borno State, in 2014.
Findings by The ICIR show that bandits and terrorist groups have disrupted the Nigerian education system, kidnapping over 1,000 students in the last decade.
Within the past three administrations, the abduction of school children has generated millions in ransom for kidnappers, leaving citizens with no hope of a possible end to the menace.
Student abduction occurs in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Among the tertiary institutions where students have been whisked away are Federal University Dutsin Ma, Katsina State, in 2023; Federal University, Gusau, in Zamfara State, in 2022, and the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, Afaka, in 2021.
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: [email protected]. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M