A teacher at St. Mary Catholic School in Agwara Local Government Area of Niger State has shared her terrifying experience after armed bandits abducted her husband and around 300 pupils on Friday, November 21, 2025.
Mrs. Martha Mathias told reporters that the attackers arrived in three cars and several motorcycles, causing panic among students and staff.
She added that the bandits also took cash belonging to teachers, which had been kept in their rooms following recent salary payments.
According to Mrs. Mathias, the chaos erupted in the early hours of the morning, with children’s cries echoing across the school compound.
“My name is Mrs. Martha Mathias, I work at St. Mary Catholic School as a classroom teacher. And I teach primary sections. It was around 1 a.m. on Friday when we were sleeping at night, and I heard children crying, ‘Please help me. Please help us. Please, where are the teachers? Please come and help us,’” she said.
Mrs. Mathias said she initially wanted to leave her room to check on the children, but her husband warned her it was too dangerous.
“And I wanted to come out. My husband said, ‘Lie down, lie down; they are bandits. Don’t go out.’ I went back. So they continued shouting. I wanted to come out again. He said, ‘Please, don’t go,’” she recalled.
The attackers gathered the children and asked about their parents and teachers.
“When they gathered all the children, they now asked them, ‘Where are your parents?’ They said, ‘We don’t have parents here. They are at home.’ They said, ‘Okay, where are the teachers?’ They said, ‘Our teachers are here. See their rooms,’” Mrs. Mathias added.
She said the bandits first went to her colleague Metron’s room before approaching theirs.
“So they now started with Metron. They went to her room. When she came out. They now come to our room. They asked my husband to come out. When he came out, they asked him to lie down. They now tied his hand behind his back. They now carried him and left with him,” she recounted.
Mrs. Mathias was later allowed to leave her room to tend to her infant child, but the bandits ransacked her room, heightening the fear.
“They said I should come out. I was about to come out. My infant child now started crying. I said I wanted to go back and carry my child. They said, okay, I can go and carry him. So when I went to carry my child, they now entered my room and scattered everywhere, scattered everything,” she said.
She also described the life-threatening danger her daughter faced during the ordeal.
“So my daughter now started shouting that she would follow us, she would follow Daddy and Mummy. She now came out, she started running, she came to me. So they now said, go back, go back. She said, I’m not going.
“They said, go back. They now put a gun on her forehead, saying that if she did not stop crying or go back to the room, they would kill her. She said, I’m not going, I must follow Mummy. One of them now said, let’s leave this woman, let her go back. That was when they left us,” Mrs. Mathias recalled.
Earlier reports from SaharaReporters confirmed that about 303 pupils and 12 staff members were abducted. Security forces, including police and military units, were immediately deployed to search for the abductees.
In a recent update, 50 of the kidnapped pupils have returned to their families, while the remaining students and staff are still in captivity.