Nigeria was shocked by kidnapped schoolboys, while parents were anxiously waiting

“How could this have happened?” said Suwaiba Lawan, whose 15-year-old son is among the missing. “He loved it here, and always helps with chores around the house.” Another mother, Jamila Salisu, said she had barely slept or eaten since her own son, from the same class, had disappeared: “The government must negotiate,” she said through tears. “Give the terrorists what they want so I can see my son again.”

Six years after the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in the city of Chibok triggered the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign, the cries of the parents of schoolchildren resound in Africa’s most populous country. Nigerian senators, celebrities and opposition leaders have reacted with horror at the announcement by Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau – the man responsible for Chibok’s kidnapping – that he has also carried out this operation. Thousands are spreading the word on social media with a new hashtag: #BringBackOurBoys.

“This promises to be another huge moment in the history of the Nigerian uprising,” said Jacob Zenn, a Boko Haram specialist at the Jamestown Foundation think tank in Washington. “After Chibok, Shekau knows not only how to conduct mass kidnapping operations, but also how to hide the prisoners and then gain mass media attention and use them to negotiate.”

News of another mass school kidnapping comes as the Nigerian government continues to insist that the country’s uprisings have been “technically defeated.” But the reality is that Africa’s largest army – a strong US counter-terrorism ally – is struggling to contain a 10-year jihadist uprising that has spread into a complex, multidimensional conflict of overlapping militant groups.

Boko Haram has expanded its power from the Northeast to the Northwest, forging alliances with heavily armed criminal networks. Islamic State’s breakaway province of West Africa, or ISWAP, has been rejuvenated with help from Islamic State and the return of battle-hardened fighters from Libya, Syria and Iraq.

Nigerian-born jihadist factions now control hundreds of square miles of territory in four countries around the Lake Chad basin, a crossroads of Africa where the US, British and French armies have bases or train special forces. In northern Nigeria, the militants are advancing, seizing dozens of smaller military bases and looting weapons. According to the US Council on Foreign Relations, the period since July 2018 has been more deadly to Nigerian security forces personnel than ever in the decade-long conflict.

“We are no longer fighting to win … the strategy is to contain and limit the damage,” said a senior Nigerian security official.

At sunset Wednesday, there had been no official updates on the number of missing boys – still listed at 333 of the school’s 800 students by the governor of the state of Katsina – or on the government’s efforts to rescue them.

The Nigerian Defense Ministry has said a search and rescue operation was underway and security officials said soldiers and intelligence officers are combing the area, aided by US surveillance planes. The British and French governments have also offered close air support, officials said.

But eyes in the sky can provide only limited relief over the expansive Rugu Forest, which spans three states and hundreds of miles. December is the end of the rainy season, when the canopy is at its closest. Security officials say they intercepted communications between the kidnappers that the boys had been divided into three groups on Monday and could have since been divided into smaller groups. The region is dotted with villages and small settlements, making it difficult to separate militants and hostages from farmers or nomadic herders.

The hostage situation is reminiscent of the US-led aerial investigation of more than 200 schoolgirls hostages captured in 2014, when US intelligence officials in Ramstein, Germany, beamed in thousands of hours of footage of Global Hawk drones flying over the Sambisa forest in the northeastern Nigeria. For more than three years, American drones searched a vast wooded area, but saw only one large group of young women believed to be the Chibok hostages while sitting under a tree – an image that became known as “the tree of life.” US and British officials concluded it would be too dangerous to attack because Boko Haram could use the girls as human shields.

President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday that the boys’ location had been determined and that the army was exchanging fire with the kidnappers, but a senior intelligence official said the air force had complained that it never received those coordinates.

“There is deep frustration in the military,” said Chidi Nwaonu, a former soldier who now heads British security consultancy Vox Peccavi. “They are hugely overworked and understaffed and have lost much of their legitimacy … It’s a recipe for disaster.”

The Kankara kidnapping is just the latest large-scale attack to hit Nigeria in recent weeks. In late November, Boko Haram kidnapped and then massacred some 70 farmers in the village of Zamabari, Borno state. Last week, the group killed 28 people and set fire to 800 houses in a village across the border in southern Niger.

The school kidnapping is especially embarrassing for Mr. Buhari, a resident of Katsina who was in his local village of Daura, less than 150 miles away at the time of the attack. A former general who briefly ruled Nigeria as a military dictator in the 1980s, he returned to power by winning the 2015 elections with a promise to restore security in the north following Chibok’s kidnapping.

The # BringBackOurGirls campaign said in a statement that news of the Kankara kidnapping was received “with predictable fear” because of the “seemingly endless nightmare of the series of school kidnappings.” The group called on Mr. Buhari to immediately fire his military chiefs and overhaul the country’s entire security architecture.

In Kankara, the residents who voted by an overwhelming majority in 2019 to re-elect Mr. Buhari for a second term are now buzzing with anger and grief. The central mosque has extended its opening hours so that the locals can offer more prayers for the safe return of the children. When local officials arrived on Tuesday to address the parents, police fired tear gas to ward off jubilant crowds.

At the school campus, some families and officials said they were concerned that Boko Haram might try to indoctrinate and recruit them if the government doesn’t get the boys back soon.

Garba Hassan, one of the school guards who went into hiding when the gunmen stormed the school, said most of the elementary school boys – those aged 15 and 16 – came because their dormitories were closer to the entrance.

While the world has focused on Boko Haram’s high-profile kidnappings of women and girls, the Islamist group has stolen a far greater number of boys – more than 10,000 – according to rights groups and defectors.

According to the Nigerian military and Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram has been recruiting children from the earliest days of the uprising, addressing them first as spies and couriers before heading to the front lines.

Jamila Sani, whose 16-year-old son is among the missing, said the government had promised to ensure that a kidnapping like Chibok would never happen again. “They promised to provide safety in the schools if they were chosen,” she said, grabbing her daughter by the shoulder. “They must keep their promise.”

Write to Joe Parkinson at [email protected]