IBADAN, Nigeria: Nigerian security forces suffered “casualties” during the rescue of over 40 kidnapped schoolchildren and teachers, the army said Saturday, in an operation that put an end to a major security crisis in the country’s relatively safe southwest.
The pupils, whose rescue was announced Friday, had been seized from three schools in Nigeria’s Oyo state and held captive for nearly two months.
The army said the children and staff were rescued following “carefully planned and executed” operations alongside intelligence agencies, police and local vigilante groups.
“However, there were some casualties on the part of the security forces,” it said, without elaborating.
The shock kidnapping, in Oyo’s Oriire local government area, was blamed on militants from Ansaru, a Boko Haram splinter group known to operate in central Nigeria, extending into the southwest.
“I was almost shedding tears yesterday when I saw them. It was mental torture,” Abdulfatai Buhari, a senator from Oyo state, told AFP, noting there were two and three-year-olds among those kidnapped.
“They were so frail,” he added.
Nigeria has been fighting a jihadist conflict that over the years has seen armed Islamist groups spread and fracture outside their strongholds in the northeast. But the attack in Oyo state sent shockwaves through a country where many had long written off such violence as a problem confined to the north. There, mass kidnappings have become an increasingly regular tactic of both jihadists and armed gangs known as “bandits”.
The Oyo abduction prompted protests across the country, a state-wide teachers’ strike and high-profile condemnation -- all just months before the January 2027 presidential elections.
A spokesman for President Bola Tinubu on Saturday accused opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar of having “weaponised the kidnap as a campaign issue”.
Southwest Nigeria — home to economic capital Lagos — has long been considered one of the safest regions in a country struggling with multiple security crises. Oyo is one of Nigeria’s most populous states, and its capital, Ibadan, is a major education hub.
