On November 21, gunmen forced their way into St. Mary’s Catholic Secondary School in the town of Agwara in eastern Nigeria. Their firing of bullets shattered the silence in the dormitory, where the students were still sleeping. They then took away the students, 303 in total, and 12 teachers.
It was the second mass kidnapping in Nigeria in less than a week. Four days earlier, about two dozen girls were taken at gunpoint from a school in neighboring Kebbi state.
The mass kidnappings came after US President Donald Trump warned of military action against Nigeria over alleged persecution of Christians in the country.
Nigeria has rejected the claim but it faces multiple overlapping insecurity crises in its central and northern regions. Terrorists are laying siege to communities, carrying out mass kidnappings and kidnappings for ransom.
Ambitious initiative for school safety
At least 2.57 billion naira ($1.7 million, or €1.5 million) was paid to the kidnappers between July 2024 and June 2025, according to the Lagos-based SBM intelligence consulting firm.
Schools are particularly easy targets. In the last 10 years, criminal gangs and Islamic terrorists have abducted no fewer than 1,880 students across Nigeria. Many were released, but some were executed.
The West African country is still scarred by the 2014 kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls in northeastern Chibok by Boko Haram militants. Some former students, most of whom were aged between 16 and 18 at the time, are still missing.
The government later launched its Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) to protect schools, especially in high-risk areas, from terrorist attacks. Despite this initiative, which initially cost $30 million, Nigeria still struggles to prevent mass kidnappings and protect children in schools.
Five hundred schools were to benefit from the first phase, out of which 30 were selected for the pilot project. Its objectives were to fortify schools with barbed wire fences, deploy armed guards, provide training and counseling to staff, and develop security plans and rapid response systems.
While some SSI successes were recorded, including the provision of prefab classrooms and teaching materials for children in displacement camps, momentum soon waned. This was largely due to the change in government in 2015, which many believe changed priorities.
“This was a turning point in how Nigeria protects its schools,” Seliat Hamzah, an advocate of inclusive education in Nigeria, told DW. The major flaw, he said, still remains “weak, inconsistent implementation.”
“On paper, the framework covers everything; infrastructure, security, emergency preparedness, community engagement, teacher training and early warning systems. But in many schools, especially in high-risk areas like the North, very little of this has materialized.”
What is hindering school safety?
Implementation of SSI has been slow. Four years ago, when kidnappings in schools were again at their peak, especially in the North-West region where criminal gangs are active, the authorities launched a four-year national financing plan for SSI with a total investment of 144.7 billion naira starting in 2023.
In 2021, an official assessment of approximately 81,000 schools found that many were vulnerable to attacks. According to the National Safe Schools Response Coordination Centre, till now only 528 schools in the country are registered for SSI.
“This is quite obvious, because look at the widespread kidnappings in schools across the country in recent times,” said Hassan Maina, executive director of the Abuja-based ASVIOL Support Initiative, a civil society group that tracks school kidnappings.
“The gap is stark: guidelines exist, but we don’t have implementation. Implementation is always patchy, monitoring is weak, and most interventions are one-off projects.”
Analysts say a lack of funding as well as coordination among Nigeria’s security agencies is hampering the initiative. They noted that the top-down approach of the initiative prevented many communities from taking ownership of SSI.
“Over-reliance on security deployment without building community-based security or early warning systems remains a major problem,” Maina said. “Schools are always within a community, so we have to ask questions [about] What do we think about early warning systems, how have we built and strengthened [them] In communities.”
Can security initiatives still work?
If SSI is to live up to expectations, officials will need to strengthen security measures in rural communities and strengthen inter-agency coordination, Hamza said.
“Community roles remain underutilized, and attackers continue to exploit long-standing vulnerabilities. Therefore, we need to strengthen our security governance and improve coordination between agencies, and put communities at the center of the security ecosystem.”
“There is no magic solution to improving school safety and protecting schools in the long term,” Confidence McHarry, a senior analyst at SBM Intelligence, told DW.
He warned that focusing only on protecting critical infrastructure like schools without addressing the broader threats facing rural communities would be a drop in the ocean.
“If we want to improve security in schools across Nigeria, we must adopt a holistic approach because where criminal groups attack communities, no matter how strong the security in schools is, it will psychologically discourage parents from sending their children to school.”
Edited by: Benita Van Eysen