Detentan Kasus Penculikan Di Nigeria: Kali Ini 15 Siswa Di Gada Sokoto

Student illustration in Nigeria. (Wikimedia Commons/Dolapo Falola)

JAKARTA - A series of kidnapping cases in Nigeria are getting worse. On Saturday more than a dozen students and four women were kidnapped from a school in Gada, Sokoto. Local MP Bashir Usman Gorau told the BBC 15 students were among those kidnapped in the morning. Earlier, on Thursday this week, hundreds of school children were also kidnapped in the western part of Kuriga. Soldiers are still searching. In an update, Uba state governor Sani told the BBC that at least 28 of these children had fled. Thursday's kidnapping - involving 280 students - is the largest mass kidnapping of a school since 2021. A gang of armed men on motorbikes carried elementary and middle school children between the ages of eight and 15, school authorities and parents said. Nigerian troops are working closely with police and a local search team to search the forest in the state of Kaduna, where Kuriga is located, as well as neighboring states. Nearly every family in the city is expected to have a child among those kidnapped. A student, believed to be 14 years old, who was shot by gunmen and hospitalized, has died. The kidnapping was carried out on women and children taken from a remote town in the state of Borno the day before. Sani said the lack of boots on the ground was the main reason for the increasing kidnapping in the area. The kidnapped families of children have formed their own panel of judges and sought help from neighboring communities about the whereabouts of the children. Nigerian Vice President Kashim Shettima is visiting Kaduna and is scheduled to meet with the governor. The President of Tinubu Bola said on social media he believed the victims would be rescued. He tweeted: "There is nothing else that can be accepted by me and the family members who are waiting for this kidnapped citizen. Justice will be upheld firmly." The mass kidnapping of Kaduna has raised the memory of nearly 300 girls in the northeastern Nigerian city of Chibok in 2014. In parts of northern Nigeria, parents worry about the safety of their children and are worried about allowing them to go to school. As a result, thousands of children did not attend school. The latest massive kidnapping of children in Kaduna occurred in July 2021 when gunmen kidnapped more than 150 students. They reunited a few months later after their families paid the ransom.

But in 2022, Nigeria passed a law banning ransom payments to kidnappers and sentenced them to 15 years in prison for doing so. It also allows the kidnapping to be sentenced to death in a case where the victim died.