No fewer than three hundred and seventeen students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Jangebe, Zamfara state, were in the early hours of Friday, abducted by unknown gunmen.
The state commissioner for information, Suleiman Tunau Anka, who confirmed the ugly i incident to Channels Television via a telephone conversation, said the gunmen stormed the school around 1 a.m on Friday and abducted the students.
Anka, however, did not immediately confirm the exact number of students kidnapped. But reports, according to Channels suggested that no fewer than 300 girls were abducted from their dormitory.
But the Zamfara State Police Commissioner, CP Abutu Yaro has confirmed that about 317 students of the Girls Secondary School Jangebe were abducted by the gunmen who stormed the school in the wee hours of Friday.
He said the police have swung into action with a view to rescuing the students.
Channels TV reports that banditry has been on the increase in recent times particularly in the northeastern and northwestern region, with secondary schools as targets of the criminals, who whisk students away in a bid to use them as bargaining chips in their negotiations with the government.
The Zamfara State government had last December ordered the immediate closure of 10 boarding and day schools in the state.
According to the government, the affected schools were those that share borders with Katsina, Kaduna, and Sokoto States which have been prone to banditry.
The Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe was not among the schools shut.