JANGEBE, Nigeria – Suwaida Sani was one of the lucky few.
When dozens of heavily armed gunmen stormed through the gates of her boarding school and shot bullets into the air in the early hours of Friday morning, they demanded or shot every student file in the courtyard.
Suwaida ran the other way, crouching under a mosquito net and trembling as the beams of the flashlight painted the wall above her head. When the 13-year-old emerged from her hiding place the next morning, the gunmen had abducted more than 300 of her classmates between the ages of 11 and 17 and led them to a nearby forest. It was the largest kidnapping of schoolgirls in the history of a country where such kidnappings are becoming increasingly well known.
“They were looking for someone to hide, but thank God they didn’t see me,” Suwaida said, sitting safely among her parents in the living room of their single-storey house. “So many of my friends have been taken that I can’t even count the number,” she said through tears. “May God spare them.”
The Government Girls Secondary School kidnapping in the small town of Jangebe is the second in just over a week in northwestern Nigeria, where a wave of armed militancy has led to deterioration in security and where ransom kidnapping has become lucrative . industry.