now gunmen in nigeria have abducted
several hundred schoolgirls in what is
the latest mass kidnapping in the region
the abduction happened at a boarding
school in the town of jangiba in zamfara
state in the early hours of friday
eyewitnesses have told local media that
hundreds of armed men attacked security
guards before they took the girls
in recent months heavily armed criminal
gangs have been ramping up attacks on
schools
and kidnapping to collect ransom
let's go right to dws waisu idris who's
standing by for us in abuja
what more do we know at this point
well these are school girls were
abducted
early friday morning in a girl secondary
school
in genghepe town which is under atalata
mafara local government
at present what we are hearing is that
nigerian army personnel and other
security forces
they are tracing this bandit
trying to see how they can stop them
from moving
far away into the forest into the bushes
with these
school girls the number is not yet
confirmed
i spoke to someone who said the people
or the school girls that were abducted
are over 400 but but what authorities
are saying now
is that they are over 300 as the news
develops well you said bandits i mean do
we know who these kidnappers are and
what they want
well usually they are the hatch men that
have been
operating in zamfara you know zamfara
has been the ethics center
for many years since the beginning of
these
bandits or gunmen who are ordinary hats
men
but is now spreading to so many people
that are getting into
it their demand is kidnapping for ransom
that is what is clear for now
but uh when they start attacking schools
it's like their own operation is
changing because initially they just
attack a village and see whom they can
peak
so why turning into schools are they
trying to change their operation to look
like
what the boko haram have been doing in
the northeast
have they come and infiltrated them
these are questions that have been
raised
which still the authorities could not
come out and say
there is clear link between them and
boko haram but their operation has
changes
and even the way and the kind of arms
they are brandishing
is showing that these are not ordinary
gunmen these are not ordinary
hats men that usually popularly refer to
as fulanis that are doing this
well there have been several large-scale
kidnappings recently in nigeria
what is behind this development
is worsening insecurity is poverty
is bad governance is injustice is
corruption because one of the nigerian
newspapers
infiltrated i was able to get access to
a group and what they are saying that
they've been abandoned for
long there is injustice that the
government didn't take care of them
when they were being attacked and their
own
cows and ships were being taken away
in cattle rustling nobody is doing
anything so somebody whose life is in
the bush
when you don't give him job when you
don't give him
his own cattle to rare
what else is he going to do then he is
being trained by a lot of gunman the
infiltration of this
from libya down to somalia
to nigeria to niger to nigeria and it's
a
stretch land of forest right from there
up to this zamfara up to abuja nigeria's
capital
we'll have to leave it there dw's ui
idris with the very latest developments
uh reporting from abuja thank you so
much