Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday (November 26, 2025) declared a “nationwide security emergency” as the country battles a wave of mass kidnappings.

“This is a national emergency, and we are responding by deploying more boots on the ground, especially in security-challenged areas,” Mr. Tinubu said in a statement.

In just a week, assailants kidnapped 25 schoolgirls, 38 worshippers, 315 school children and teachers, 13 young women and girls walking near a farm, and another 10 women and children — across parts of the country.

Dozens have been rescued, others escaped but more than 265 children and their teachers seized from a boarding school in the country’s Niger state on Friday are still missing.

“In view of the emerging security situation, I have decided to declare a nationwide security emergency and order additional recruitment into the Armed Forces,” he said.

At the weekend he ordered a redeployment of police VIP bodyguards to core policing duties, and approved the recruitment of 30,000 additional officers.

He has also ordered the hiring of another 20,000 officers — taking the total to 50,000 new police recruits.

Nigeria has suffered a string of abductions of schoolchildren since Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls in Chibok in the restive northeast in 2014, sparking an international outcry.

Pope Leo XIV called Sunday (November 23, 2025) for the release of over 300 hostages taken from a Catholic school in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria.

“I learned with immense sadness the news of the kidnappings of priests, faithful, and students in Nigeria and Cameroon,” he said.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) on Saturday said gunmen had kidnapped more than 300 students and teachers in raids on two schools in the country.

“I make a heartfelt appeal for the immediate release of the hostages,” Leo said, expressing his “deep sorrow, especially for the many young boys and girls kidnapped and for their anguished families”.

“Let us pray for these brothers and sisters of ours and that churches and schools may always and everywhere remain places of safety and hope,” he said at the end of the Angelus prayer.

Gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls. That was followed by an early Friday raid on St Mary’s co-education school in Niger state.

The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed and dozens abducted, came as US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.

Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram jihadists at Chibok in northeastern Borno state more than a decade ago. Some of those girls are still missing.

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