Emmanuel Laigan’s buzzing phone woke him up at 5 a.m. on November 21.
“Your son’s school has just been attacked,” his brother said. Laigan jumped out of bed and drove his motorcycle seven miles to St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, a community in Niger State in north central Nigeria.
When he reached the gates an hour later, the school was in chaos. Attackers had ransacked the student hostels and flung their beds into the courtyard. Students’ clothes, shoes, and books lay in the dust. Panicking families crowded the entrance. A mother wept as she called her daughter’s name over and over. One father stood frozen. Other parents collapsed on their knees.
Laigan discovered that armed bandits had taken his first-grade son Habila in the overnight school raid.
“I became weak,” Laigan told CT through a translator. “My son is a quiet boy. I do not know why anyone would do this to children.”
Laigan, a member of the United Missionary Church of Africa, said his family relies on the steady stream of visits and prayers of his church as they wait for news of Habila.
In total, kidnappers seized 315 Christian victims from St. Mary’s, including 303 students ages 5 to 18 years old and 12 staff members—Nigeria’s largest mass school abduction to date. Fifty students had escaped as of November 23. At least 250 captives, including Habila, remain missing.
Paulina Ishaya, a volunteer health worker at the school, said gunshots woke her up at about 1:30 a.m. “One of the nurses told us there were bandits in the school,” she told CT. “We immediately ran, jumped the fence, and hid in the bus until daybreak.”
Authorities have not yet identified who kidnapped the students, and the kidnappers have not contacted families, according to Daniel Atori, spokesperson for the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Niger State. Meanwhile, families are shattered and living in constant fear, Ishaya said: “Many parents cry from morning till evening because of their children. Some can’t even eat.”
Atori said the association has declared a three-day fast and prayer vigil beginning December 5 to pray for the captives’ safe return.
The attack occurred within a week of two other mass kidnappings. Armed men stormed a public school for girls about 116 miles north of Papiri on November 17 and abducted 25 Muslim schoolgirls. Two days later, bandits raided Christ Apostolic Church in the neighboring Kwara State, killing two worshipers and abducting 38 others during a livestreamed service. The kidnappers demanded ransoms but released their victims after the government threatened to attack.
The school kidnappings and church attack came weeks after US president Donald Trump designated Nigeria a “country of particular concern” (CPC). Trump suggested withholding subsidies to Nigeria over the government’s inaction to stop anti-Christian violence.
The Nigerian government has rejected Trump’s claims and denied that Christians are targeted more than other groups. Jere Gana, Nigeria’s former information minister, told local media that Trump’s threats may have triggered the latest wave of school abductions, since terrorist groups use children as “human shields.”
Gana said the location of the attacks suggested the kidnappers deliberately retreated into forests in anticipation of aerial strikes.
St. Mary’s proprietor, Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, criticized the Nigerian government for making “no meaningful effort” to rescue the victims still in captivity.
“I’m not aware of any effort made by government beyond collecting the names of the students from us,” he told the BBC.
Yohanna, who is also bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kontagora, disputed the Niger State government’s claims that the church defied orders to close the school after threat of attacks, saying that they had not received any orders.
Later, on November 22, the day after the St. Mary’s raid, the Niger State government shut down schools across the state.
Atori, the CAN spokesperson, decried the plight of families caught up Nigeria’s spiralling violence and insecurity.
“It came as a shock,” he told CT. “Now schools are closed. Only God knows what … these people want to carry out [next].”
Atori said prayers and unity in churches are reassuring distraught parents. “Our prayers are working. God is answering,”
Mass school kidnappings in Nigeria date back to 2014, when Boko Haram militants abducted 276 teenage girls, mostly Christians, from a government secondary school in Chibok, a town in northeast state of Borno. While about 160 escaped or were released, around 100 remain missing or in captivity.
In 2018, the Islamist jihadist group raided another government girls’ school in Dapchi in Yobe State and abducted 110 students. Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden.”
Since Nigerian president Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023, there have been at least five mass school abductions. Bandits have also snatched more than 100 Christian clergy amid the country’s growing kidnapping crisis. Nigerian pastor Audu Issa James died this fall while in captivity.
For Laigan and his family, desperation fuels every passing day since his son’s kidnapping. His wife, Lydia, refuses to eat. They have not received any word from government security agents.
“They told us since the governor is aware that they would handle it,” Laigan said. “But this is our fear: We do not know if they will rescue our children.”
Laigan said each time he hears rumours of released victims, he rushes to the place where they’ve been seen, but his son remains missing.
“I just wish someone can help me get my child back home soon.”
