Gunmen abduct seven students from Nigeria polytechnic hostel, police say
Gunmen seized seven students from a polytechnic hostel in Zamfara before dawn, and one was later rescued as six remained missing.
Gunmen stormed an off-campus hostel housing students from the Federal Polytechnic, Kaura Namoda, and abducted seven of them in the early hours of June 3, in another stark reminder of how insecurity still reaches into places meant to be safe enough for study. By June 4, one of the students had been rescued, while six remained missing.
The attack came around 0400 GMT in the Low-Cost area on the outskirts of Kaura Namoda town in Zamfara State. Police said suspected bandits raided the rented residence and took the students to an unknown destination before security forces arrived. Joint police tactical teams and military personnel were deployed to the scene, but the gunmen had already fled. The Zamfara State Police Command said the search for the victims and the attackers had been intensified.
The case quickly exposed the familiar pattern that has turned student abductions into a recurring test of state authority in northwest Nigeria. Early accounts differed on the number taken, with some putting the figure at six before police later confirmed seven. The fact that the victims were students, and that the abduction happened in off-campus housing rather than inside the school itself, sharpened concerns about how exposed young people remain even when schools are not formally under siege.
The broader record is bleak. UNICEF has said insecurity disrupted education in Katsina, Zamfara and Niger states between 2020 and 2024, while ACLED says armed banditry spread from Zamfara into other northwest and north-central states in 2014. ACLED also records 13,485 deaths linked to banditry in northwest Nigeria between 2010 and 2023. UNICEF has warned that school attacks in northern Nigeria threaten children’s right to education, and said 10.2 million children of school-going age were out of school in Nigeria as of mid-2025, with 45% in the northwest.
Kaura Namoda has been hit repeatedly. In July 2025, Zamfara authorities vowed to intensify efforts after the killing of 35 kidnapped villagers in the area, and residents reported a raid on 16 villages there in August 2025. The latest abduction now adds pressure on police, military units and local officials to show they can protect campuses, student housing and surrounding communities in a region where repeated promises have not yet broken the cycle of armed violence.
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