MAGA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s chief promised authorities would intensify efforts to rescue 24 schoolgirls who have been kidnapped by gunmen earlier this week from a college within the nation’s restive northwestern area.

The ladies have been kidnapped from their dorm earlier than daybreak on Monday, when gunmen attacked their boarding college, the Authorities Women Complete Secondary College within the city of Maga in Nigeria’s Kebbi state.

Native police mentioned the gunmen scaled the fence to enter the dorm and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement officials guarding the varsity earlier than seizing the women and killing a workers member.

No group has claimed accountability for the assault, however analysts and locals say gangs usually goal colleges, vacationers and distant villagers in kidnappings for ransom. Authorities say the gunmen are principally former herders who’ve taken up arms in opposition to farming communities after clashes between them over strained assets.

Hawau Usman, a 15 year-old pupil who was amongst these kidnapped, had managed to flee.

“They saved shifting, and once they left, I ran again to the varsity,” Usman instructed The Related Press on Tuesday.

“I knocked on the principal’s home, however nobody answered,” she mentioned. including that she later discovered refuge at a instructor’s home.

President Bola Tinubu mentioned in a press release launched late Tuesday that he has “directed the safety companies to behave swiftly and produce the women again to Kebbi State.”

Tinubu, who’s leaving Wednesday for South Africa the place he’ll attend this weekend’s Group of 20 summit of the world’s richest and high growing international locations, expressed remorse that the “heartless terrorists have disrupted the schooling of harmless schoolgirls.”

At the least 1,500 college students have been seized within the area since Boko Haram jihadi extremists seized 276 Chibok schoolgirls over a decade in the past. However bandits are additionally lively within the area, and analysts say gangs usually goal colleges to achieve consideration.

Analysts and residents blame the insecurity on a failure to prosecute identified attackers, and the rampant corruption that limits weapons provides to safety forces whereas guaranteeing a gentle provide to the gangs.

Senator Iroegbu, an Abuja-based safety analyst, instructed the AP on Wednesday that the abductors finally dictate the phrases however mentioned he was hopeful the women can be rescued.

“Intelligence efforts needs to be prioritized to find the abductors with out endangering the women. If contact is established, negotiation — seemingly involving ransom — could also be vital,” he mentioned.

Nigeria’s Chief of Military Workers Lt. Gen. Waidi Shaibu met with troopers within the hours after the assault and directed “intelligence-driven operations and relentless day-and-night pursuit of the abductors,” in keeping with a military assertion.

“We should discover these kids. Act decisively and professionally on all intelligence,” he mentioned. “Success isn’t optionally available.”

The military chief urged for a collaborative effort by all safety outfits, together with native vigilantes and hunters, in getting the women rescued.

Dan Juma Umar, a civil society chief in Maga, mentioned it was not the primary time armed males attacked the realm and that residents had alerted safety operatives about “suspicious actions” three days earlier than the assault on the varsity.

“We notified the safety operatives of the deliberate assault. Had they acted on the knowledge we offered, this tragedy might have been prevented,” he instructed the AP.

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Shibayan reported from Abuja, Nigeria.