Gunmen abduct Nigerian students, marking third university attack in a month

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Gunmen abducted four university students in northern Nigeria during an attack early Tuesday, police said, the latest in a series of school abductions that have raised security concerns under the nation’s new president.

The gunmen invaded a lodge for students of the Nasarawa State University, near the capital city of Abuja, and took the students hostage, Nasarawa police spokesman Ramhan Nansel said in a statement.

It is the third school abduction in the West African nation in the last month, underscoring a security challenge under the government of President Bola Tinubu who rode to power in February on the promise of a "renewed hope" and ending the deadly violence in Nigeria's troubled north.

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The latest attack followed a similar pattern of recent attacks in which gun-firing men break into student buildings and flee with hostages, some of whom are still in captivity. The students, like most other captives, are held for ransoms which analysts say the gunmen use to buy arms.

The Nigerian flag is seen being carried over Abuja, Nigeria, Jan. 28, 2019. (SODIQ ADELAKUN/AFP via Getty Images)

Police said security forces in Nasarawa responded to a distress call about the attack early Tuesday morning and "combed the area, but to no avail." The police commissioner has ordered a manhunt for the culprits "with a view to rescuing the four victims unhurt," according to the spokesman.

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Nigerians have in recent years grappled with rampant school abductions which are blamed on bandit groups mostly made up of young pastoralists from Nigeria’s Fulani tribe caught up in a decades-long conflict between host communities and herdsmen over limited access to water and land in remote areas.

The frequency of the attacks has reduced over the last year amid special security operations targeting the armed groups.

Although Tinubu has taken some steps to improve Nigeria's security challenges, including appointing new security chiefs, the government has not been able to end the violence and stop the abductions, said Confidence MacHarry, from the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm.

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"Security is not as much a priority to the president as the economy," MacHarry said, pointing out Nigeria security forces need to collaborate more and deploy more in violent hotspots.