Parents pick up their children from the Federal Government Girls’ College Bwari in Abuja, Nigeria, on Saturday after Nigerian officials ordered the temporary closure of 41 federal unity schools over the rising cases of abductions across the country. Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/EPA
Initial reports undercounted the number of students and staff kidnapped by Nigerian gunmen from the St. Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State, Nigeria.
The Christian Association of Nigeria’s revised number is now is 303 students and 12 staff members, for a total of 315 kidnapped on Friday.
The revised number was obtained after local officials conducted a census count to determine who was missing, Most. Rev. Bulus DauwaYohanna, CAN’s Niger State chapter chairman, announced.
The students taken were male and female and between ages 10 and 18.
School officials initially reported 215 students and staff had been taken, but 88 more were taken while trying to escape, Yohanna’s spokesman, Danial Atori, told CNN on Saturday.
Intelligence reports warned of a potential attack and, although local authorities said school officials were ordered to close all boarding facilities at the school, the order was ignored, the BBC reported.
Several state- and federally run schools in northern Nigeria closed after learning of Friday’s attack to prevent further abductions.
Local police said security agencies are “combing the forests with a view to rescue the abducted students,” the BBC reported.
The families of those abducted can only wait and hope.
“I just want them to come home,” the aunt of two kidnapped girls, ages 6 and 13, told the BBC.
The father of daughters who attend the school but were not among those taken said the attack has affected everyone.
“Everybody is weak,” Dominic Adamu said. “It took everybody by surprise.”
The number abducted surpasses the 276 who were abducted from Chibok in 2014, and the new number represents about half the students who attended the Catholic school in Papiri.
Papiri, a community in the Nigerian city of Lagos, said the revised number of students kidnapped makes the attack one of the worst in country’s history.
The attack was the third this week in Nigeria in which people were abducted.
Gunmen also attacked a government-run boarding school in Kebbi State and kidnapped 25 female students on Monday.
Gunmen also attacked a church in Kwara State, killed two people and abducted 38 others.
