{"id":79118,"date":"2025-11-21T10:01:57","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T10:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=79118"},"modified":"2025-11-21T10:01:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T10:01:57","slug":"gunmen-abduct-pupils-teachers-in-midnight-raid-on-catholic-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/11\/21\/gunmen-abduct-pupils-teachers-in-midnight-raid-on-catholic-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Gunmen Abduct Pupils, Teachers in Midnight Raid on Catholic School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Olokuta Rofiat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Armed men in the early hours of Friday attacked St. Mary\u2019s Catholic School in Papiri, Agwara LGA of Niger State, and abducted several pupils, teachers and staff.<\/p>\n<p>The raid, which occurred between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., left the school\u2019s watchman with gunshot injuries. Local officials say the number of abductees is yet to be confirmed, though community members fear it could exceed 100.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed Abdullahi Rofia, Head of Disaster and Relief for Agwara LGA, said a full list of those missing was still being compiled as anxious families rushed to the school.<\/p>\n<p>The Niger State Government described the attack as \u201cdeeply distressing,\u201d noting that intelligence reports had earlier flagged rising threats in the area.<\/p>\n<p>It said boarding schools in high-risk zones had been ordered shut, but St. Mary\u2019s allegedly resumed operations without notifying authorities.<\/p>\n<p>Security agencies have launched a search-and-rescue mission and opened an investigation.<\/p>\n<p>The government urged residents to provide information that could assist the operation.<\/p>\n<p>The attack comes days after 25 schoolgirls were kidnapped in Kebbi State, raising concerns about a resurgence of school-targeted banditry across northern Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Olokuta Rofiat Armed men in the early hours of Friday attacked St. Mary\u2019s Catholic School in Papiri, Agwara LGA of Niger State, and abducted several pupils, teachers and staff. The raid, which occurred between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., left the school\u2019s watchman with gunshot injuries. Local officials say the number of abductees is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":79119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1724,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insecurity","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79120,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79118\/revisions\/79120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}