Kankara Abduction: Nigerian Army Confirms 333 Students Missing

The Nigerian Army has confirmed that three hundred and thirty-three students are still missing after bandits attacked Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina on Friday night. 

The Coordinator of Defence Media Operations, Major General John Enenche corroborated the figure earlier released by the Katsina State Government on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.

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“The principal reported that he had 839 in the boarding house; and as at the time they were abducted, shortly after that, some came back and it was about five hundred plus that did not return,” he explained.

According to him, “As at 2 pm yesterday (Sunday), the students that could not be accounted for reduced to 333. Out of that 333, before I came into the studio, one escaped out of wherever they kept them.”

Enenche also gave further insight on how the students were moved away from their school by the gunmen.

He explained that the abductors used motorcycles to ferry the schoolchildren into the bush from where some of the students escaped.

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“That is their usual characteristics – those abductors,” Enenche noted on the same day the Katsina governor, Bello Masari met with President Muhammadu Buhari about the incident. “It is the same system; the same approach they used. There was no evidence, no information about them using other modes of transport.”

On Friday evening, gunmen attacked Government Science Secondary School in the Kankara council area of the north-west state, kidnapping scores of students.

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The attack prompted the Katsina State Government to order the closure of all boarding schools in the state, a move aimed at forestalling similar occurrence.