Freed Nigerian schoolchildren to be reunited with families

A final group of 130 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren freed by the government on Sunday are expected to be reunited with their families in the central Niger state on Monday, ending a month-long ordeal that drew global concern.Last month, unknown gunmen took an estimated 215 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from St Mary’s Catholic school, Papiri community in Niger state, which runs west from the capital, Abuja, to neighbouring Benin.Fifty children escaped not long after, and another 100 were released on 7 December.“Another 130 abducted Niger state pupils released, none left in captivity,” the presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare posted on X on Sunday.The last group of children were reportedly released near Nigeria’s border with Benin but as with the previous release, there was no mention of how they regained freedom or what group was behind the abduction. Other details also remain unclear.Kidnap-for-ransom abductions represent one angle of Nigeria’s multifaceted security crises. Gangs of armed bandits roam the vast countryside in the north, while jihadists operate with external support from surrounding areas in the Sahel. The abundance of non-state actors has left rural areas particularly vulnerable, and Nigeria’s under-equipped security agencies continue to be stretched.The Papiri incident was the second mass abduction in the west African country in a week, and the second in Niger state in four years, after a May 2021 abduction of 135 pupils from an Islamic seminary. The most high-profile mass abduction remains the infamous 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in north-east Nigeria, which spurred a global campaign supported by dozens of celebrities including Michelle Obama and Elton John.According to the Lagos-based geopolitical advisory SBM Intelligence, there were at least 4,722 victims of kidnappings across Nigeria between July 2024 and June 2025, with at least 762 people killed and about $1.66m paid as ransom in total.The deteriorating security situation has led to the US president, Donald Trump, to threaten military action in Nigeria. The Trump administration has designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern, citing a “Christian genocide” – a framing that Abuja has repeatedly rejected as being an oversimplification of a complex crisis.Reuters contributed to this report