Nigerian boy freed after mass school abduction describes blindfolds, beatings and hiding from military jets as 153 children and teachers remain captive.
Newsroom (12/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) A loud crash at the school gate ripped through the night, jolting hundreds of sleeping children at St. Mary Catholic School in Nigeria’s rural Papiri community. Half-dressed and disoriented, students spilled from their dormitories—some straight into the arms of armed gunmen roaring in on motorbikes.
Eleven-year-old Onyeka Chieme froze as the thudding footsteps grew closer. When he saw the guns, he and several friends leapt from a window and ran. The gunmen pursued on motorbikes, firing into the air until the terrified boys stopped. “They said if we ran, they would shoot us,” Chieme recalled quietly, sitting in his family’s modest home in north-central Niger State.
What followed was one of Nigeria’s largest mass school abductions: 303 students—most aged 10 to 17—plus 12 teachers taken from the Catholic boarding school on November 21. Days earlier, 25 students had been seized in neighboring Kebbi State in a near-identical attack.
Fifty children escaped within hours. On Sunday, more than two weeks after the raid, Chieme was among 100 students freed and handed over to military buses deep in the bush. Yet 153 children and all 12 teachers—including Chieme’s own brother—remain in captivity. Nigerian authorities have released no details on how the 100 were freed, whether arrests were made, or if ransom was paid, as is common in such cases.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Chieme described nights sleeping on stubby grass under the open sky, drinking river water, and constant fear. Older students were blindfolded and had their hands tied. Anyone who spoke too loudly was beaten. Guns were always visible.
“On the first night we got there, I thought they were going to kill us,” he said, glancing at his parents. “But their leader said we should not fear—it is just money they wanted. If they paid the money, they would release everyone.”
Whenever Nigerian military jets flew overhead—part of search operations announced by officials—the gunmen forced the captives beneath trees. “They don’t want the airplanes to see us,” Chieme said. Security analysts note that bandit gangs frequently use hostages as human shields to deter airstrikes.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Papiri attack, but it fits the pattern of criminal gangs locally known as “bandits” who ride in large numbers on motorbikes, raid villages and schools, and demand multimillion-naira ransoms. Though distinct from jihadist groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, these amorphous armed bands have made school abductions a grim fixture of Nigeria’s security crisis.
Since Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok—nearly 100 of whom remain missing—almost 1,800 children have been abducted in at least a dozen major school attacks nationwide. Rights groups and analysts say the government often negotiates and quietly pays ransoms to calm public anger, a practice critics argue only fuels the cycle.
“When you do that, it encourages the abductions to continue,” said Aisha Yesufu, co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls movement.
In Papiri and other insecure regions, parents are increasingly keeping children home. Nigeria already has the world’s highest number of out-of-school children—one in every five globally, according to UNICEF—making the threat of abduction another devastating blow to an already struggling education system.
For the Chieme family, Sunday brought bittersweet relief. Onyeka is home, thin and quiet, but his brother is not. “If he dies, I don’t think I can survive it,” said the boys’ father, Anthony Chieme. “It is better my child dies in my room where I see his corpse and his grave than die in the hands of bandits in the bush where you see nothing.”
Across the village, Precious Njikonye wept with joy after her son emerged among the freed 100. She had visited the ruined school almost daily since the attack, clinging to fading hope. “Everyone who has a child knows how painful it is to not be able to account for where the child is,” she said. “I never thought I would see him again.”
As Nigeria’s military continues aerial searches and ground operations, the fate of the remaining 153 children and their teachers hangs in grim uncertainty—another painful reminder of a kidnapping epidemic that shows no sign of ending.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from AP and Crux Now
Related Images:
