One hundred children kidnapped from a Catholic boarding school in central Nigeria last month have been released by their captors and transported to the capital, authorities confirmed Sunday. The fate of greater than 160 other students and staff members abducted in the identical attack stays unknown.
The mass abduction occurred before dawn on Nov. 21, when armed men stormed St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, Niger State, and seized 315 students and staff, most of them children aged between 9 and 14, at gunpoint.
On Sunday, Nigerian presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare confirmed 100 of the youngsters had been freed, in keeping with Agence France-Presse. They were flown to Abuja and were expected to be handed over to the Niger State government on Monday.
A United Nations source told AFP that arrangements were being made to transfer the youngsters back to state officials. Reports didn’t specify whether the discharge was achieved through negotiation, ransom or military intervention, and no information was available on the condition or location of the remaining hostages.
Local church officials said they’d not yet received formal notification from the federal government.
“We have been praying and waiting for his or her return, whether it is true then it’s a cheering news,” Daniel Atori, spokesman for Bishop Bulus Yohanna of the Kontagora Diocese, which runs the varsity, was quoted as saying.
Roughly 50 individuals managed to flee shortly after the attack.
Officials later estimated that 265 hostages had been taken deep into the forests of north-central Nigeria, where kidnapping for ransom has develop into widespread.
The attack on St. Mary’s was considered one of several mass abductions reported across Nigeria in November, a month that saw a pointy escalation in armed violence, including the kidnapping of a minimum of two dozen Muslim schoolgirls, 38 church worshippers and multiple attacks on civilians in rural communities.
Three days after the Papiri abduction, Anthony Musa, a father of three of the abducted children, died of a suspected heart attack attributed to the emotional toll of the ordeal.
Nigeria has struggled to contain the growing threat posed by various armed factions, including jihadist insurgents, criminal gangs and militias. The country’s kidnap-for-ransom crisis has evolved right into a structured illicit industry, generating a minimum of $1.66 million between July 2024 and June 2025, in keeping with a report from Lagos-based SBM Intelligence.
In response to the safety crisis, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced a broad expansion of Nigeria’s security forces in late November. He ordered the recruitment of 20,000 recent law enforcement officials along with the 30,000 previously approved, and authorised the hiring of forest guards under the Department of State Services.
The Nigerian Senate held an emergency debate during which lawmakers labelled kidnapping a type of terrorism and proposed capital punishment for offenders. Several senators raised alarms over infiltration of the military and police, citing lists of security force recruits containing names of known militants.
Rights groups and analysts say a mix of jihadist actors, bandit gangs and armed Fulani herders are behind the surge in attacks.
The World Watch List 2025 report from Open Doors noted that 3,100 of the 4,476 Christians reportedly killed for his or her faith globally through the review period were in Nigeria.
A newly energetic group often known as Lakurawa, believed to be linked to al-Qaeda’s West African affiliate JNIM, has emerged within the northwest. The group is reportedly armed with advanced weaponry and espouses a radical Islamist ideology.
In one of the widely reported incidents last month, Rev. Edwin Achi of the Anglican Diocese of Kaduna was confirmed dead on Nov. 19, nearly a month after being abducted alongside his wife from their home in Nissi, Kaduna State. A ransom demand of 600 million naira, or about $415,000, had been made by the captors. His wife, Sarah, stays in captivity, and their daughter can also be missing.
U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Nigerian authorities of allowing violence against Christians within the country, warning of possible military intervention. The Nigerian government has long pushed back on claims that violence within the country is religiously motivated, but has faced criticism from rights activists that it’s failing to guard its residents from armed actors.
One of the earliest abduction cases to attract international attention occurred in 2014, when Boko Haram abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok, sparking global outrage. Many of those girls remain missing, and the incident continues to haunt public memory as armed groups perform copycat kidnappings nearly a decade later.
The current wave of abductions has prompted stepped-up surveillance by U.S. aircraft over known jihadist strongholds in Nigeria’s north, in keeping with security analysts tracking regional flight paths.
A neighborhood official in Borno State told AFP that armed groups could also be holding captives as a type of insurance, fearing possible U.S. airstrikes in response to recent threats.
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