An unknown number of students from a school in the center-west of Nigeria were kidnapped this Sunday by armed men, the authorities confirmed to Efe.

“It is true that many students from a school in Tegina (in the state of Niger) have been kidnapped today,” but “at the moment, I cannot determine the real number,” Mary Noel-Berje, the head of the press release of the governor of the state of Niger, Abubakar Sani Bello.

Local Nigerian media indicated that at least 200 schoolchildren were kidnapped, but this information has not been confirmed by any official source so far.

This kidnapping took place a day after the release of 14 students from the University of Greenfield, in Kaduna, a state located in the northwest of the country and a neighbor of the state of Niger, after having been kidnapped since April.

Mass kidnappings at schools in northern Nigeria for lucrative ransoms have increased in recent months, and more than 800 students have been held since December.

On March 12, 39 students from the Igabi Higher School of Forestry Mechanization, in the state of Kaduna, were kidnapped and released between April and May.

On March 2, a total of 279 students who had been abducted on February 26 in a kidnapping attributed by the authorities to “bandits” were released from a public girls' school in the state of Zamfara, also in the northwest of the country.

On February 17, armed men kidnapped 38 students and teachers from the Government Science School in Kagara, Niger state, and released ten later.

Likewise, on December 11, 344 students – released a week later – were also captured at a school in Kankara, in the state of Katsina (northwest), in an attack claimed by the jihadist group Boko Haram, which until then had been It limited itself to attacking in the northeast of the country, although the authorities attributed it to bandits.

Kaduna and other northwestern states are often attacked by criminal gangs involved in cattle rustling and kidnapping for ransom.