At Least 50 School Hostages Escape in Niger State

Four days after gunmen emptied the dormitories at St Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, Niger State, the headline number from my first report still stands: 303 children and 12 staff abducted in a single raid. What has shifted is the count of those who have made it home, and the level of pressure on Abuja to account for the rest.

Church officials now say 50 students escaped their captors over the weekend, slipping away through bush and back roads to reach safety.

President Bola Tinubu has since announced that 51 of the abducted students have been recovered in total, a slightly higher figure than the 50 escapees confirmed by church officials.

Even on the most cautious reading, that leaves over 250 children and around a dozen staff still in captivity, in what the UN and international media now describe as one of Nigeria’s largest school kidnappings on record.

Blame, Denial, and Closed Gates:
A public blame game has followed. The Niger State government says St Mary’s reopened its boarding section in defiance of an earlier order suspending boarding schools in high-risk areas.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which owns and runs the school, flatly denies ever receiving a closure directive and accuses officials of shifting responsibility instead of confronting a glaring security failure.

In the meantime, the governor has ordered all schools in Niger State closed “until further notice”, a sweeping move that keeps children technically safe from gunmen but also out of classrooms, in a country that has already signed up to protect education under the Safe Schools Declaration.

While politicians trade statements, parents are still at the gate, counting who has come home and who has not.

The World Is Watching Papiri:
Abroad, the Papiri abductions have triggered strong condemnation. The UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has warned that Nigerian schools must be “sanctuaries, not targets”, calling for the immediate release of all those taken from St Mary’s.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV has spoken of being “deeply saddened” and appealed publicly for the kidnappers to free the students and staff, urging Nigerian authorities to act swiftly and decisively.

From Washington, the United States has condemned the abduction of “over 300 students and teachers” from the Catholic school in Papiri, and linked the case to wider concerns about violence against Christians and broader insecurity in Nigeria. The Tinubu administration, for its part, insists the crisis affects “people across faiths and regions” and that Nigeria is not the caricature painted in foreign speeches.