Amnesty International Nigeria has condemned the prolonged captivity of 42 schoolchildren abducted in Askira Uba Local Government Area of Borno State, 144 days after they were taken.
In a Tuesday statement titled “Nigeria: Borno’s Forgotten Children”, the rights group recalled that pupils of Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School were abducted by gunmen on May 15, 2026, and have remained in captivity since.
Amnesty noted that more abductions have occurred across the north since then and warned that Nigeria is failing its children.
“No child should go through what children are going through now in Nigeria. Education should not be a matter of life and death for anyone. Nigeria is failing children once again in a horrifying manner,” the organisation said in the statement posted on Facebook.
The group said the future of thousands of schoolchildren in northern Nigeria remains bleak, as hundreds of schools in some states have been closed indefinitely because of rising insecurity. Many children, it added, have abandoned education due to trauma from witnessing violent attacks or living in captivity.
Amnesty urged the Federal Government to intensify efforts to rescue all schoolchildren in captivity safely and to hold suspected perpetrators to account.
