Nigerian forces hunted Tuesday for armed fighters who abducted 25 schoolgirls in the northwest, in the latest burst of violence seized upon by US President Donald Trump’s followers.

The early Monday morning raid on a secondary school in Kebbi State was the latest abduction of schoolchildren in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, more than a decade after Boko Haram’s infamous kidnapping of 276 girls in the northeast sparked international uproar.

It drew fresh attention from the US right following Trump’s threats of military intervention over the alleged targeting of Nigeria’s Christians.

“You must continue day and night fighting. We must find these children,” Major General Waidi Shaibu, recently promoted to chief of army staff, told troops deployed to Kebbi State.

Shaibu urged the soldiers to “leave no stone unturned” in the search for the schoolgirls.

Kidnappers scaled the fence at the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the town of Maga and abducted the students after killing the vice-principal.

Kebbi is caught between the jihadist threat from neighbouring Niger and criminal gangs who loot villages while kidnapping and killing residents across the north of Africa’s most populous country.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday condemned the kidnapping and urged local people to share information to thwart possible attacks.

He expressed “sadness over the abduction of the schoolgirls”, which occurred “despite intelligence warnings of a possible strike by the bandits”, in a statement from the presidency.

“I urge community leaders and our compatriots across the country, especially those in the theatres of operations, to share useful information. Your cooperation is crucial in our fight against these security challenges.”

– US Tensions –

Kebbi State police told AFP on Tuesday that the abducted schoolchildren were all Muslim.

But Republican Riley Moore of the US House of Representatives, in a post on X urging his followers to pray for the 25 girls, echoed Trump’s claims of the persecution of Christians.

“While we don’t have all the details on this horrific attack, we know that the attack occurred in a Christian enclave in Northern Nigeria,” Moore wrote.

Trump at the start of November said he had asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack in Nigeria because radical Islamists are “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers”.

Nigeria has rejected that claim, insisting that the country’s various security crises have left more Muslims dead.

Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told AFP on Monday that Nigeria was in talks with the United States about security, and he did not expect Washington to order a military strike.

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Nigeria is the scene of numerous conflicts, including jihadist insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.

Tinubu on Tuesday confirmed that Brigadier-General Musa Uba, head of the army’s operations against militants in the volatile Lake Chad region, was killed after being seized by jihadists in the northeast on Friday.

He is the highest-ranking officer killed since 2021 in the country’s long-running jihadist war.

The Islamic State group’s West African branch, ISWAP, claimed responsibility for that ambush.

The army said two other soldiers and two militia members were also killed.

– ‘Dragged Me Outside’ –

Amina Hassan, the wife of the school’s murdered vice-principal, Hassan Makuku, told Nigerian television she had tried to wake her husband up after hearing noise outside their house at 3:30 am (0230 GMT), before the gunmen burst in.

“We started struggling with them, and one of them pulled out his gun and shot my husband, then he dragged me by my hand outside the house,” Hassan said.

“I was still arguing with them when my daughter came out, then they left me and went to her and took her with them,” she said, adding that her daughter managed to escape into the bush when the attackers got distracted.

Monday’s raid was the second mass school abduction in Kebbi in four years, following a June 2021 incident when bandits took more than 100 students and staff members from a government college.

Those students were released in batches over two years after parents paid ransoms. Some of the students were forcefully married off and returned with babies.

AFP