The scores of schoolchildren who remained in captivity after being kidnapped at gunpoint last month from their dormitories in the middle of the night have been released, the Nigerian government said.
Gunmen from an as-yet unidentified group seized 253 students, including nursery children as young as four, and 12 staff members on Nov. 21 from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, in northwestern Niger State. One adult and 99 students were released two weeks ago.
A spokesman for the Nigerian president said on Sunday that the remaining 130 schoolchildren had been freed, but a representative for the Catholic Diocese of Kontagora, which runs the school, said only that a “second batch” had been released.
If the release of 130 students is confirmed, that would bring the total number of children who have been released to 229 — two dozen short of the number of students who were believed to have been originally taken. The statement from the government did not account for the discrepancy.
“As it is, the federal government can confirm that all the abducted pupils of the Catholic School, Papiri, numbering 230, have been freed,” said Mohammed Idris, Nigeria’s minister for information. “Not a single pupil is left in captivity.”
But Daniel Atori, an aide to Bishop Bulus Yohanna, the archbishop for the diocese where the school is, said the school stands by its statement that up to 265 people were abducted.
“If the release of 130 people is confirmed, we will continue to plead with the government for the remaining 35 still in captivity,” Mr. Atori said.
The abduction of students has been a long-running problem in Nigeria, but the mass abduction last month was the latest in a recent surge of kidnappings.
The abductions, human rights groups say, reflect worsening insecurity in Nigeria and have been cited as a reason that more than a quarter of Nigerian children — 19 million — do not attend school, one of the highest rates in the world.
At least 47 incidents of student abductions were recorded in Nigeria in 2024 and 2025, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, with the number of such incidents doubling in 2024 compared to the previous year.
The government spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, said on social media that the students would be able to rejoin their parents in time for Christmas celebrations after a “military-intelligence driven operation” to free them.
Although he wrote that the “remaining” students had been freed, he gave few details about their return.
It was not entirely clear that situation had been completely resolved.
In public statements, Nigerian officials described the release as a “rescue,” but analysts said they were skeptical about that assessment, and raised the possibility that either a ransom was paid or that prisoners were released to obtain the students’ freedom.
“A rescue means there was some forceful operation that led to the release of these students,” said Kabir Adamu, managing director of Beacon Consulting, a private security consulting firm based in Nigeria. “But in this instance, there was no forceful operation.”
“There are two possibilities,” he added. “Either money was paid or some form of compromise was reached. It could be that some of the group’s members that are in captivity have been released in exchange.”
The recent abductions come as Nigeria faces intense scrutiny from the United States over widespread killings by a range of armed groups and insurgents. President Trump last month amplified allegations of targeted violence against Christians in Nigeria, threatening possible American military action in Africa’s most populous nation.
But people of all faiths in Nigeria have suffered kidnappings and terror attacks, with more than 12,000 people killed this year alone, and there is no clear evidence to suggest Christians are attacked more frequently than Muslims.
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