LAGOS: Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu on Thursday ordered his minister of state for defense to go to western Kebbi state, where two dozen girls kidnapped from their boarding school earlier this week are still missing.
The order for minister AlHajji Bello Matawalle to “relocate to Kebbi State over the abduction of 24 schoolgirls” came as pressure mounted on the government after US President Donald Trump this month threatened military action over what he described as the killing of Nigeria’s Christians, a narrative rejected by the Nigerian authorities.
A presidency statement said Matawalle had “experience in dealing with banditry and mass kidnapping,” after he secured the release of 279 students aged between 10 and 17 who had been kidnapped from a government secondary school in 2021 in western Zamfara state.
Another state, Kwara, in the east of the country, has ordered some schools shut following a deadly raid on a church on Tuesday, a government official told AFP.
Gunmen stormed a church service in the state on Tuesday, killing at least two people.
