A total of 315 students and teachers were kidnapped from the St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools, Papiri in the Agwarra local government area of Niger state, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), has said.
This was revealed by the Chairman of the Niger State chapter of the association and Catholic Bishop of Kontagora Diocese, Most. Rev. Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, on Saturday.
He said a breakdown of the newly released data showed that 303 students and 12 teachers were affected.
Yohanna said, “After we left the school at Papiri, we decided to make calls, do a verification exercise, and do further enquiries on those we had thought escaped successfully, only to discover that 88 more students were also captured after they tried to escape.
“Our attention was drawn to when some parents whose children we had thought escaped from the attack also came asking about their children. We became curious, and that was when we did a census and discovered that they were abducted.
This now makes it 303 students (male and female), including 12 teachers (4 females and 8 males), bringing the total number of abducted persons to 315.”
He said the total of pupils and students before the incident was 629, with primary having 430 and the secondary having 199 students.
