KADUNA, Nigeria – Ransom kidnapping is booming in northern Nigeria, and school children are the most popular commodity.
Just before midnight on March 11, gunmen burst into a school about 300 meters from a military training school in Kaduna State and seized dozens of students from their dormitories. It took less than 12 hours for the kidnappers to submit a now-publicized request via a grainy video on Facebook.
“They want 500 million naira,” said one of the terrified Federal College of Forestry hostages, who sat without a shirt in a clearing in the woods, an amount equal to about $ 1 million. Masked men with Kalashnikovs walked on the ice among the 39 students – mostly young women – and then started hitting them with bullwhips.
“Our lives are in danger,” one woman shouted. “Just give them what they want.”
On March 13, the Nigerian army thwarted an attempt to kidnap 300 more students at a boarding school less than 50 miles away. The next day, children were part of a group of 11 people kidnapped from the town of Suleja, in the Nigerian state of Niger.