Gunmen kidnapped five students and two staff, including a Turkish national, from an international school in Nigeria’s southern state of Ogun, police said on Saturday.
The kidnappers, who abducted the six Nigerians and Turkish staff member late on Friday, have not made contact with police or school authorities and no arrest has been made, Ogun police spokesman Abimbola Oyeyemi said.
“We have deployed police operatives and are making serious efforts to release the victims unhurt and bring the culprits to book,” he said.
In September, Ogun state police rescued two kidnapped Chinese nationals who were working for a quarry company.
Nigerian authorities are involved in negotiations aimed at securing the release of some of the more than 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok, the president’s spokesman said in December last year.
His comments, posted on Twitter, came in response to reports in Nigeria’s media that some of the girls had been released by the militant group, which he said were untrue.
“The negotiations are ongoing and the Department of State Service, DSS is full of optimism that they will be successful,” Garba Shehu, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, said in a tweet.
“To my friends spreading the news of a further release of Chibok Girls, we are not there yet,” he tweeted.
Around 270 girls were taken in April 2014 from their school in Chibok, Borno state, where Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state, killing more than 15,000 people and displacing over two million.
Reuters