Practical guidance for heads, boarding staff, parents and school governing boards.
Over the past few weeks Nigeria has seen a fresh wave of mass abductions and attacks, including the very large raid on St Mary’s Catholic school in Niger State and several other kidnappings and church attacks across the north and middle belt. These incidents have been widely reported and confirm that criminal gangs and armed groups are exploiting gaps in state security, school security and rural policing to kidnap pupils for ransom.
Schools, especially low-resource boarding schools, need strong security measures. However, some of these measures may not be expensive electronic fences or private security contractors to make themselves significantly safer. This 2-part blogpost will discuss practical, low-cost, immediately actionable measures, grouped into three groups. These groups are immediate (do today), short-term (do in 1–7 days), and medium-term (do in 1–3 months). Each item in this list is chosen so it can be implemented on a tight budget and without specialised technical skills.
Why Should This Concern Educational Providers and Safeguarding Professionals?
Recent attacks follow a common pattern: armed men arrive at night (often on motorbikes), use gunfire to terrify residents, abduct pupils and staff, and move into nearby forests.
This should concern safeguarding professionals and schools because rising patterns of targeted attacks, kidnappings, and armed incursions directly threaten children’s right to safety, education, and psychological stability. Even when incidents occur far from a particular school’s location, the ripple effects such as heightened fear, disrupted learning, community trauma, and increased vulnerability of children commuting through unsafe areas, make it a safeguarding issue. Schools must always operate on the principle of prevention, preparedness, and protection, and current insecurity trends show how easily children can become collateral victims when schools lack strong risk-mitigation systems.
Additionally, safeguarding is not only about responding to harm, it includes anticipating threats and reducing exposure to risks. The surge in kidnapping-for-ransom incidents and movements of violent groups shows how quickly hotspots can shift, making every school responsible for reviewing its security posture, staff awareness, and child protection readiness. When national threats rise, safeguarding professionals must strengthen early-warning systems, update policies, address gaps in community communication, and ensure that both staff and children know what to do in emergencies.
Ransom-motivated criminal gangs, are the principal perpetrators in many areas, and schools are attractive targets because they contain children whose families will desperately seek their return.
Possible Low-Budget Solutions
Immediate (Start today)
- Close boarding access overnight by locking all external doors to dorms and mark essential internal escape routes. Create a single monitored gate for night movements.
- Post staff on a rota at dormitory access points: rotate at least two adult staff all night (Start with existing staff; no new hires required.)
- Set up a one-page emergency contact list. For every child: parent/guardian phone, alternate contact, medical needs, home address. Keep copies in the office, the dorm house, and with the headteacher. Carry photocopies during any movement. Use printed sheets and laminate if possible.
- Agree a clear nighttime routine that includes lights out only after a headcount and corridor sweep. Keep corridors and dorm windows locked but ensure fire exits are known and unobstructed.
- Immediate communications drill. Decide a single, short radio/phone message to be used in an emergency (see sample below). Everyone, staff and a small group of trusted parent volunteers, must know it.
These immediate, low-cost measures may seem simple, but schools that implement them consistently may be considered significantly harder to attack. Most kidnapping attempts succeed largely due to poor statewide and national security, but also because schools are unprepared.
Part Two of this series will discuss short-term (1–7 days) and medium-term (1–3 months) strategies that any school, particularly those in rural or low-resource settings, can put in place without major budgets or technical expertise.
Click here to continue to part 2
Sources and further reading
- Explainer: What’s behind Nigeria’s latest school kidnappings, church attack? https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/whats-behind-nigerias-latest-school-kidnappings-church-attack-2025-11-22/
- Gunmen seize more than 200 children from Nigeria Catholic school. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/21/students-taken-from-catholic-school-in-central-nigeria-in-latest-abduction
- 50 students abducted from Niger Catholic school have escaped — CAN https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/11/50-students-abducted-from-niger-catholic-school-have-escaped-can/
- Insecurity: Mass school closures spread across North as governors roll out emergency measures. https://guardian.ng/news/insecurity-mass-school-closures-spread-across-north-as-governors-roll-out-emergency-measures/
- In Nigeria, repeated kidnappings put the government under pressure https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2025/11/24/in-nigeria-repeated-kidnappings-put-the-government-under-pressure_6747764_124.html
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