Teachers protest schoolchildren kidnappings in Nigeria

Teachers in major Nigerian cities Tuesday protested a string of kidnappings and attacks targeting schools by armed groups.

Gunmen abducted at least 46 pupils and staff from three schools in the southwestern state of Oyo on May 15, in an attack the army said was carried out by jihadists.

At least 42 more -- including schoolchildren as young as two years old -- were taken from their schools in northeastern Borno state the same day.

Kidnapping for ransom -- especially of schoolchildren -- is an ongoing battle for authorities in conflict-hit northern Nigeria, but the mass abductions were unusual for calmer Oyo state.

"Kidnapping has no place in education," read a banner held by protesters in Oyo capital Ibadan, as an Afrobeats song critical of the government bellowed from the large speakers mounted on a van.

In Lagos, meanwhile, protesters marched to the state house of assembly to demand the release of the students.

"Education is under siege," Hassan Taiwo of the Education Rights Campaign, told AFP, denouncing an "epidemic of attacks on school and abduction of school children and teachers that we have experienced over the years."

"We pray that our teachers and students are released," Jessica Obong, spokeswoman for Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), told AFP.

But she dismissed calls by some for schools to be closed, insisting it would only play into the hands of the attackers.

The teachers' union in Oyo went on an indefinite strike starting Monday. But a nationwide strike is not being discussed yet, Obong said.

Protesters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri said attacks on schools are worsening across Borno state, the epicentre of Nigeria's 17-year-old jihadist insurgency.

Borno was the site of Boko Haram's most infamous mass school abduction in April 2014, when the jihadist group kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from a girls-only school in the town of Chibok.

A series of mass school kidnappings in the final quarter of 2025 -- including the abduction of about 24 schoolgirls in Kebbi state in November and the seizure of roughly 300 students and several teachers in Niger state the same month -- drew renewed international attention to insecurity in the country.

"We want the government and security agencies to act swiftly and show the families that they have not been forgotten," teacher Kaumi Usman told AFP in Maiduguri.