YAWOTA, Nigeria – It was mid-morning when Aduke Balogun noticed a masked man in military fatigues walking toward her children’s school. Minutes later, gunfire erupted, more gunmen appeared, and residents fled.
In the chaos, her six-year-old daughter, Feranmi, managed to escape, but another daughter, eight-year-old Kausarat, was not so lucky. She was among more than 30 students and a teacher seized and taken into the bush near Yawota, a town in southwestern Nigeria’s Oyo State.
Videos of kidnapped children have been circulating online, but Balogun cannot bear to watch them, and it remains unclear whether they are from her children’s Baptist Nursery and Primary School.
“Every day, I pray and hope for their safe return,” she told Reuters as she tended a stall selling soft drinks, bread, and biscuits across the road from the school.
The May 15 raid – and simultaneous attacks on two other nearby schools – have jolted a region long considered relatively safe compared with more unstable areas further north, fuelling fears that kidnapping-for-ransom gangs are expanding their operations far beyond their traditional strongholds.
Widespread kidnappings and the growing presence of armed groups across Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country – are likely to be key issues in the run-up to the nation’s next general elections in 2027.
“The Oyo abductions mark a dangerous escalation from a crisis once largely confined to Nigeria’s north and Middle Belt into the southwest,” said Cheta Nwanze, a partner at security consultancy SBM Intelligence. “As the 2027 elections approach, Nigerians will judge politicians primarily on whether they can keep classrooms and communities safe.”
Nigeria’s government has struggled for years to tackle insecurity, ranging from herder-farmer conflicts across the country’s central region to the mix of bandits, Islamist militants, and community defence militias operating across northern states.
Amid the violence, armed groups frequently kidnap motorists, clerics, and schoolchildren, holding them until ransom payments are made. SBM Intelligence said kidnappers collected at least 2.57 billion naira ($1.89 million) in ransom payments across Nigeria in the year to June 2025.
Two weeks after the Yawota kidnappings, schoolbags, books, food flasks, water bottles, and children’s footwear lay scattered across classroom floors at the Baptist Nursery and Primary School. A police patrol van was parked outside, while armed officers kept watch beneath a fig tree.
At LA Primary School, 5 km (3 miles) from where Balogun’s daughter was seized, one teacher was shot dead while attempting to escape through a classroom window during another attack, according to Lamidi Waheed, a teacher at the school.
In the third raid, six teachers and seven students were kidnapped from the nearby Community High School in Ahoro-Esinele, Waheed added.
Days later, a video circulated online that allegedly showed gunmen beheading a teacher kidnapped during the attack. Reuters was unable to verify the footage.
Fearing the insecurity and lacking mobile phone networks to call for help, many residents of farming communities in Oyo’s Oriire District, about 300 km northeast of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, have fled, local chief Tajudeen Abioye told Reuters.
When he came to power three years ago, President Bola Tinubu pledged – like his predecessors – to tackle insecurity by recruiting more soldiers and police officers and ensuring they were better equipped and paid.
However, the Oyo attack, along with the kidnapping of 42 schoolchildren last month in insurgency-hit Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, has intensified scrutiny of Tinubu’s security record ahead of the 2027 elections.
Tinubu is expected to seek re-election and is likely to enter the race as the favourite, as the opposition, led by challengers Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, remains divided. However, worsening insecurity could weigh on his prospects.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Oyo attacks, but the military has blamed Boko Haram Islamist militants, who typically operate in the northeast.
Some security personnel were injured during an initial attempt to rescue the children and teachers from Community High School, said Abioye.
Since then, authorities have made contact with the kidnappers, and eight suspects have been detained and are assisting investigators, police spokesperson Olayinka Ayanlade said, without providing further details.
Authorities have urged families to remain calm and refrain from spreading rumours or unverified videos.
Grace Ojo, whose seven-year-old grandchild was among those taken from the Baptist school, has only one request.
“We don’t need money, foodstuffs, or anything else. We just want our children back,” she said.
Source: Reuters
