A classroom at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Agwarra local government, Niger state, Nigeria, on November 23, 2025. IFEANYI IMMANUEL BAKWENYE / AFP
Some 130 Nigerian Catholic schoolchildren were handed over to state authorities on Monday, December 22, a day after the government said it had secured their release and a month after one of the country's worst mass abductions.
Authorities said the children, along with seven teachers and support staff, were the last batch of those taken by gunmen in the late November mass abduction at the St. Mary's co-educational boarding school in north-central Nigeria.
"Thank God for the mercy he has shown us, because if you look at these children and imagine the torment they went through, it is unbearable," Niger state Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago said at the reception ceremony.
Six vans of children were escorted by security forces in armoured vehicles to the Niger State Government House, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter in the state capital, Minna, saw on Monday.
