How Hidden Truths Are Driving Nigeria’s School Kidnapping Crisis?

Late Thursday into the early hours of Friday, gunmen on motorcycles stormed St Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Papiri village, Niger state, abducting dozens of students as families slept nearby. A father who spoke to the BBC, identified as Theo for safety, said he woke to the engines and watched the children being corralled away in a scene he described as brutal—like shepherds herding livestock. ‘They were being trafficked on foot the way shepherds control their herds,’ he recalled, noting he felt powerless and dialed the police, but by the time officers arrived, it was too late to prevent the abduction. A stark, human moment amid a growing crisis that has unsettled communities across northern Nigeria.