It was mid-morning when Aduke Balogun noticed a masked man in military fatigues walking towards her children’s school. Minutes later, gunfire erupted, more gunmen appeared, and residents fled.
In the chaos, her six-year-old daughter Feranmi managed to escape, but another daughter, eight-year-old Kausarat, was not so lucky – one of more than 30 students and a teacher seized and spirited into the bush near Yawota, a town in southwest Nigeria’s Oyo state.
SBM Intelligence said kidnappers collected at least 2.57 billion naira ($1.89 million) in ransom payments in Nigeria in the year to June 2025.
Videos of kidnapped children are circulating, but Balogun cannot bear to watch,h and it is unclear if they are from her children’s Baptist Nursery and Primary School.
“Every day, I pray and hope for their safe return,” she told Reuters as she manned a stall selling soft drinks, bread and biscuits across the road from
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