36 Students Kidnapped From Borno School During NECO Exam, Military Pursues Abductors

Thirty-six students from Government Day Secondary School in Lassa, Askira/Uba Local Government Area of Borno State, are currently in Boko Haram captivity after gunmen attacked the school on Monday and abducted students and teachers who were in the middle of writing their National Examinations Council Senior School Certificate Examination.

The identities of the missing students have since been made public as officials work toward securing their release. Among the 36 are 11 male candidates and 25 female candidates. The Borno State Government has confirmed that the abducted students are between 15 and 18 years old.

Fifteen to eighteen. Old enough to be sitting national exams. Young enough to still be somebody's child at home.

Gunmen stormed the school during the examination, abducting students and teachers before fleeing into surrounding bush. Shortly after the attack, troops from Operation HADIN KAI launched a pursuit operation, supported by the Nigerian Air Force. Reports indicate that soldiers engaged the fleeing abductors in gunfire as they tracked them through adjacent forest terrain.

At the time of this report, the rescue operation is ongoing. No official confirmation of any students being freed has been issued.

Why This Feels Different, Even Though It Should Not

The Borno State school kidnapping in Lassa follows a pattern that Nigeria has been trying to escape for over a decade. Chibok was 2014. Dapchi was 2018. Every time, there are names. Every time, there are families. Every time, there are promises of rescue that take longer to fulfill than anyone says out loud.

To be honest, the detail about NECO exams makes this one land differently, maybe not because it is objectively worse than other abductions, but because there is something particularly cruel about disrupting the one moment when a young person in a conflict-affected community is trying to build a future through education. These students were not in the wrong place at the wrong time in some abstract sense. They were exactly where they were supposed to be, doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

That should have been the safest place in the world for them.

Operation HADIN KAI's rapid response is encouraging, and the Nigerian Air Force's involvement suggests this is being treated as a priority operation rather than a bureaucratic handover to slow-moving processes. Whether that tempo can be sustained and whether it produces results before the students are moved deeper into territory that becomes harder to reach is the question that matters most right now.

The Borno State Government's decision to release the identities of the missing students reflects an understanding that visibility creates accountability. When these children have names and faces, they are harder to forget. That is, in some small way, a protective mechanism.

The families of those 36 students are waiting. Some of them are probably waiting in the same Lassa community where the attack happened, in a place that no longer feels safe, watching for news that has not come yet.