Nigeria says 130 kidnapped Catholic schoolchildren freed

The country has seen a wave of recent mass abductions, as it suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns.Published On 21 Dec 2025Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school in November, according to a presidential spokesman, after 100 were freed earlier this month.“Another 130 Abducted Niger State Pupils Released, None Left In Captivity,” Sunday Dare said in a post on X on Sunday.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Twenty-four schoolgirls released after northwestern Nigeria kidnappinglist 2 of 4Is there a ‘Christian genocide’ in Nigeria?list 3 of 4Armed men kidnap 13 women in Nigeria’s latest abductionlist 4 of 4Nigeria rescues 100 children abducted from Catholic boarding schoolend of listIn late November, hundreds of students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger State.The attack came amid a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in the town of Chibok.The West African country suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns, from armed groups in the northeast to armed “bandit” gangs in the northwest.The exact number of children taken from St Mary’s has been unclear throughout the ordeal.Initially, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said that 315 students and staff were unaccounted for after the attack in the rural hamlet of Papiri.About 50 of them escaped immediately afterwards, and on December 7, the government secured the release of about 100 people.That would leave about 165 thought to be still in captivity before Sunday’s announcement that 130 were rescued.However, a UN source told the AFP news agency that all those taken appeared to have been released, as dozens thought to have been kidnapped had managed to run off during the attack and make their way home.The accounting has been complicated because the children’s homes are scattered across swaths of rural Nigeria, sometimes requiring three or four hours of travel by motorbike to reach their remote villages, the source said.