Africa’s most populous country has long experienced insecurity but the spate of abductions recently has left it scrambling
Nigeria’s defence minister has resigned, the presidency said, as the country reeled from a security crisis including mass kidnappings of schoolchildren. The departure of Mohammed Badaru Abubakar came after President Bola Tinubu declared a “nationwide security emergency” last week as the country scrambled to respond to a wave of mass kidnappings that have seen hundreds of people, mostly schoolchildren, captured within days last month.
Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, said in a statement that Abubakar, 63, was quitting with immediate effect, on health grounds.
“His resignation comes amid President Tinubu’s declaration of a national security emergency, with plans to elaborate on its scope in due course,” the spokesman said.
Africa’s most populous country has long experienced insecurity but the spate of abductions recently has left it scrambling.
US President Donald Trump in late October named Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern — a State Department designation for religious freedom violations — over what he called killing of Christians. He subsequently threatened to intervene militarily.
Washington’s rhetoric — rejected by the Nigerian government and independent security analysts — has placed the country’s security crisis under the spotlight. Armed gangs seized more than 300 teachers and staff at St. Mary’s co-education school in north-central Nigeria on November 21. Fifty escaped but the rest are still in captivity.
“The children are fine and will be back soon,” national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu, was quoted as saying during a high-profile visit with school officials in the town of Kontagora, in central Niger state.
Since Boko Haram militants kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok in an infamous raid more than a decade ago, Nigeria has struggled to contain mass kidnappings. In addition to kidnappings, which are frequent in Nigeria and are mostly carried out by criminal gangs seeking quick ransom payments, Africa’s most populous country has been battling a deadly militant insurgency in its northwestern regions, since 2009.
In the wake of the kidnappings, the country’s president declared emergency, and ordered mass recruitment of police and military personnel. Recent raids have resulted in kidnappings of schoolchildren and teachers, worshippers and priests, a bride and her bridemaids, farmers, women and children as well as farmers across various parts of the country.
Two weeks after one of Nigeria’s worst school kidnappings, parents of the more than 250 missing children are desperate for news and dismayed at what they see as the slow response from authorities.
The Christian Association of Nigeria said 303 children and 12 school staff were kidnapped by gunmen at St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Papiri, a hamlet in the state of Niger.
Fifty pupils managed to escape in the following hours, but since then there has been no news on the whereabouts or conditions of the other children, some as young as six, and the missing school staff.
The school was guarded by unarmed volunteer guards, who fled when attackers arrived. It is one of the worst mass kidnappings since the 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Chibok.
The attack has put a spotlight on the persistent insecurity in Nigeria more than 10 years after the Chibok abductions, at a time when the country is under scrutiny from US President Donald Trump over its alleged ill-treatment of Christians.
President Bola Tinubu denies the accusations of religious persecution but is under pressure. He declared a nationwide security emergency last week and ordered the recruitment of thousands of additional army and police personnel to tackle the surge in violence across the country.
His national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, told local Catholic leaders in Kontagora town on Monday that “the children are doing fine and will be back soon,” according to a statement by CAN in Niger state.
But there has been no further update, leaving families in an anxious limbo. The identities of the kidnappers, believed to be hiding in the dense and vast forests dotting Nigeria’s largest state, are unknown and no ransom has been demanded, parents told Reuters.
Parents said they were called to the school last Friday, a full week after the kidnapping, to register their missing children with the police. They came from many different locations, and outside states. The registration was ordered after the state governor of Niger, Mohammed Umar Bago, said the numbers of those kidnapped had been exaggerated.
“The government and the public need evidence of the fact that children were actually abducted,” Reverend Father Stephen Ndubuisi-Okafor, who is from the Catholic Diocese in charge of the school, said as the registration took place. They had not made up any numbers or names, he said, “this is actually what is happening.”
