infamous Chibok mass abduction of 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\nLocal police say armed men stormed St Mary’s at around 02:00 (01:00 GMT), abducting students staying there.<\/p>\n
Niger state governor Mohammed Umaru Bongo announced on Saturday that all schools in the area would close, warning that was “not a time for blame game”.<\/p>\n
Dominic Adamu, whose daughters attend the school but were not taken, told the BBC: “Everybody is weak… It took everybody by surprise.”<\/p>\n
One distressed woman tearfully told the BBC that her nieces, aged six and 13, had been kidnapped, adding: “I just want them to come home.”<\/p>\n
The military, police and local vigilantes are conducting a search for the children, combing nearby forests and remote routes believed to have been used by the gunmen.<\/p>\n
Authorities in Niger state said St Mary’s School had disregarded an order to close all boarding facilities following intelligence warnings of a heightened risk of attacks. The school has not commented on that allegation.<\/p>\n
The kidnapping of people for ransom by criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, has become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The payment of ransoms has been outlawed in an attempt to cut the supply of money to the criminal gangs, but it has had little effect.<\/p>\n
On Monday, more than 20 schoolgirls, who the BBC has been told are Muslim, were kidnapped from a boarding school in Kebbi state.<\/p>\n
Authorities there have now ordered all secondary schools and colleges to close.<\/p>\n
A church was also attacked further south in Kwara state, with two people killed and 38 others abducted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orders were given for many schools to close in the states of Kebbi, Niger, Katsina, Yobe and Kwara.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-279230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}