The Kidnapping Of Kuriga Students, Gunshots And Pandemonium

The group was instructed by their captors to lie down and remove their white school shirts in order to be better hidden from view while a military fighter jet flew overhead three times.

The pupils had just sang the national anthem and were getting ready for class when the gunfire started. And then there was pandemonium.

Hundreds of gunmen in military uniforms entered the school premises on Thursday at around 8:00 a.m. Kuriga is a sleepy rural community located 100 kilometers outside of Kaduna. They arrived on motorbikes.

Shots were fired into the air as additional gunmen approached from behind on foot and blocked all exits.

After the early-morning assault ended, the armed group had picked up and abducted over 280 children in the most recent mass kidnapping.

It was one of the biggest mass kidnappings by gunmen in recent times. Criminal gangs typically target roads, colleges, and schools in their quest for huge numbers of victims to demand ransom.

Security personnel were still searching woodlands in Kaduna and other states on Sunday for the Kuriga school victims.

In Kaduna, Kuriga's unfenced school, with its dilapidated five blocks, housed primary and secondary school sections. Security was basic, as in many such rural schools.

An 11-year-old student who managed to flee, Maryam Usman, stated, “We initially thought they were soldiers and began hailing them and shouting ‘May God be with you’.”

Then, when they stormed the school, where 1,000 students were set to begin classes, the assailants opened fire into the air. Teachers and students dispersed to get away.

Some, like Usman, sought refuge in adjacent houses, but the assailants found them, dragged them outside, and struck them with whips.

Usman sobbed outside her home and told the media, “One of the men grabbed my hijab (veil) and started dragging me on the ground while I tried to resist.”

“I managed to remove my hijab and ran off. That was how I escaped.”

Mustapha Abubakar reported seeing a convoy of about 20 motorcycles carrying individuals dressed in military uniforms enter the school while he was just taking his seat in the classroom.

The kidnappers took hundreds of people, including 18-year-old Abubakar, from his secondary school and forced them into the forest while beating them with horsewhips. But he got away with it.

Mustapha Abubakar reported seeing a convoy of about 20 motorcycles carrying individuals dressed in military uniforms enter the school while he was just taking his seat in the classroom.

The attackers took hundreds of people, including 18-year-old Abubakar, from his secondary school and forced them into the forest while beating them with horsewhips. But managed to escape.

Abubakar told the media as he took cover under a tree beside the only road through the area, “We trekked for hours in the scorching heat until we were all exhausted.”

Abubakar said that the kidnappers divided the girls from the boys.

“There were more girls than boys.”

Three times a military fighter plane passed over, but their captors instructed them to lie down and remove their white school shirts so they would be more difficult to see from above.

He escaped by plunging into thick undergrowth, and after walking for hours, he reached a settlement near Kuriga, where he spent the night before making his way home the next morning.

“I still have hallucinations in the night,” he said. “I keep hearing sounds of motorcycles outside my house as if they are coming to take me.”

I Couldn't Do Anything 

A 20-year-old farmer named Jibril Ahmad, who was outside the school when the gunmen arrived, provided a similar story.

Gazing over the empty school grounds, Ahmad remarked, “I saw them riding into the school, firing gunshots in the air and gathering confused children and beating them with whips.”

Ahmad, a participant in the village's community security team, stated that he and other vigilantes raced inside the house for his hunting gun to confront the assailants.

“One of us was shot in the head and killed while another was injured in the leg during the fight,” he said.

Parents watched helplessly as the kidnappers took the pupils, with moms crying and begging the attackers to spare their children, according to other residents.

Amina Abdullahi, whose two children were among the abducted, said, “We watched while they were taking our children away, we could not do anything.”

It was a double nightmare for the school's security guard, Abdullahi Musa, 76. A few days prior to the mass kidnapping, he was kidnapped while working on his farm outside of the community, and his kidnappers had only just freed him.

When the perpetrators broke into the school, he was inside.

“We were helpless as they herded the children out of the school into the bush like shepherds with their livestock,” Musa said.

Sani Hassan, a teacher in the secondary school section, was having his breakfast just outside when someone raised an alarm.

Hassan said that after racing through an alleyway towards the school, he halted a few meters away to watch as kidnappers dragged away their victims, one of whom was one of his coworkers.

He said, “There was nothing I could do. I just stood in a trance-like state and watched in horror.

 “It was surreal.”