One of the 25 schoolgirls abducted by terrorists from a boarding school in Kebbi State has escaped from captivity and returned home, the school’s principal confirmed on Tuesday.

According to The Guardian, the bandits launched a deadly attack on the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, in Danko-Wasagu Local Government Area, on Monday, November 17. During the invasion, the gunmen killed a staff member and abducted 25 students, taking them into the surrounding forests.

According to the principal, Musa Rabi Magaji, one of the abducted girls managed to slip away from the captors and found her way home late on Monday—just hours after the mass abduction. Her unexpected return has offered a glimmer of hope to anxious families awaiting news of their children.

Magaji also disclosed that another student, who was not among the 25 officially listed as abducted, managed to escape during the chaos of the attack.

She added that security operatives have intensified search-and-rescue missions across the area amid rising concerns over the resurgence of school kidnappings that have continued to plague northwestern Nigeria.

READ ALSO:Abductors Kill Seminary, Free One In Edo

Meanwhile, a top Nigerian general has ordered his troops to fight “day and night” to rescue 25 schoolgirls whose kidnapping in the northwest has been seized on by US President Donald Trump’s followers.

The early Monday morning raid on a secondary school in Kebbi State was the latest abduction of schoolchildren in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, more than a decade after Boko Haram’s infamous kidnapping of 276 girls in the northeast sparked international uproar.

It has become another flashpoint to draw the ire of the US right following Trump‘s threats of military intervention over the alleged killing of Nigeria’s Christians.

“You must continue day and night fighting. We must find these children,” Major General Waidi Shaibu, recently promoted to chief of army staff, told troops deployed to Kebbi State.

Shaibu urged the soldiers to “leave no stone unturned” in the search for the schoolgirls.

READ ALSO:Gunmen Kill Six, Abduct Two Children In Fresh Plateau Attack

Though police rushed to the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the town of Maga, the gang had managed to scale the fence and abduct the students after killing the school’s vice-principal.

Kebbi is caught between the jihadist threat from neighbouring Niger and criminal gangs who loot villages while kidnapping and killing residents across the north of Africa’s most populous country.

Kebbi State police told AFP on Tuesday that the abducted schoolchildren were all Muslim.

But Republican Riley Moore of the US House of Representatives, in a post on X urging his followers to pray for the 25 girls, echoed Trump’s claims of the persecution of Christians.

“While we don’t have all the details on this horrific attack, we know that the attack occurred in a Christian enclave in Northern Nigeria,” Moore wrote.

READ ALSO:Bandits Kill Worshiper, Abduct Others In Sokoto Mosque

Trump at the start of November said he had asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack in Nigeria because radical Islamists are “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers”.

Nigeria has rejected that narrative, insisting that the country’s various security crises have left more Muslims dead.

Nigeria is the scene of numerous conflicts, including jihadist insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.

Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told AFP on Monday that Nigeria was in talks with the United States about security.

Asked whether he thought Washington would send the military to strike, Tuggar said: “No, I do not think so.”

“Because we continue to talk, and as I said, the discussion has progressed. It’s moved on from that.”

Chaos erupted on Tuesday morning at the ever-busy Oba Ovonramwen Square, popularly known as Ring Road in Benin City, Edo State, as market women from Oba Market staged a protest against an eviction notice issued by the state government ahead of planned renovation work on the fire-ravaged section of the market.

The women blocked the major road, causing heavy gridlock and forcing traffic to be diverted to adjoining streets.

Their protesters later moved to the Edo State House of Assembly, where they sought government intervention.

Oba Market was among five markets gutted by fire at the wake of the 2020 governorship election in Edo State.

The immediate past governor, Godwin Obaseki, had promised to rebuild the affected markets, a pledge that was not fulfilled, leaving the burnt portions to deteriorate into waste dumps.

READ ALSO:Edo IPDs Lament Economic Hardship, Seek Assistance

However, Governor Monday Okpebholo, during a recent visit to the market, vowed to rebuild the gutted areas.

Following his visit, the market women were issued a two-month notice to vacate the premises for renovation.

Speaking during the protest, Mrs. Florence Eweka, said the women were taken by surprise by the sudden directive for all traders to leave the market.

According to her, “the problem was that they announced that they want to rebuild the gutted part of the market close to Bob Izua Park.

“They have started working on it, but they just announced that all the market women should leave the market. Where do you want them to go? There should be a preparation to where to go before you send them out.

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“The Ekiosa Market they are rebuilding has not been completed yet. Those ones are in trouble, they are stranded, where do you want us to go? Prepare a place for them before moving them out of this place,” She said.

Another trader, Mrs. Mary Okosun, who operates four shops with six employees, also questioned where she was expected to relocate.

“I have four shops in the market, with six workers, where do you want me to take those wares to? How do you want those persons to feed from? They are asking us to leave here by the end of January.

“Where do they want us to pack? If they want us to pack, they should make provisions for us. Those in other markets are stranded; where do they want us to pack?” she said.

Addressing the protesters, Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly, Hon. Blessing Agbebaku, appealed for calm, assuring the women that their concerns would be conveyed to Governor Okpebholo.

READ ALSO:NDLEA Arrests 39 Suspects With 2,477.59kg In Edo

He said the governor’s intention was to rebuild the market for the benefit of the traders.

“We are your representatives, and any problem that is brought before us here will be sorted out. The governor of Edo State, Senator Monday Okpebholo, meant well for that your market, because those areas gutted by fire have been turned into toilets. He wants to renovate the market. But you are saying that not all the markets were gutted.

“So we are going to pass the information to him. The area that was burned down will be first rebuilt, then you people will move in there, then the other parts will be rebuilt. The governor wants a better market for you all,” he said.

The Museum of Fine Arts in the US city of Boston has returned two of the famed Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, authorities in the West African nation said late on Monday.

The move represents “the return of a huge part of Nigeria’s history,” Olugbile Holloway, the head of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), said.

“As much as this occasion is symbolic to Benin, it is also symbolic to Nigeria’s struggle,” he added.

The Benin Bronzes are hundreds of sculptures and plaques that were looted from the royal palace in the Kingdom of Benin, part of modern-day Nigeria, after British forces captured Benin City in 1897.

The priceless artworks, believed to have been crafted in Benin starting in the 1500s, were taken as spoils of war and today are scattered in museums and private collections across the world.

READ ALSO:‘I Was Held By Juju’ – Man Who Stole Artefacts Worth N500m From Esama’s Compound Confesses

Western museums, including those in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, have returned several hundred of the artefacts, but hundreds more are believed to be still missing.

Benin’s traditional rulers and Nigerian authorities have for years been negotiating their return.

Calling the returns from the Boston museum a “historic moment”, Nigeria’s culture minister, Hannatu Musa Musawa, said those “conversations” were ongoing “and soon, the process of returning them all to their rightful owners will begin.”

The Benin Bronzes have been a source of tension within Nigeria, with Benin’s traditional ruler, the Oba, insisting that the artefacts belong to him as the ruler of Benin and the descendant of the royal family from whose palace they were plundered.

READ ALSO:Country Of Particular Concern: What It Means For Nigeria

Last week, Britain and South Africa returned to a Ghanaian traditional king over 130 gold and bronze artefacts taken between the 1870s and the early 20th century, his palace announced.

Asante king Otumfuo Osei Tutu II received the artefacts at the Manhyia Palace Museum in the Asante capital Kumasi on Sunday, a royal statement said.

The items included royal regalia, drums and ceremonial gold weights and depict governance systems, spiritual beliefs and the role of gold in Asante society.

Their return comes as pressure mounts on Western museums and institutions to address the restitution of African artefacts plundered by colonial powers such as Britain, France, Germany and Belgium.

READ ALSO:Benin Monarch Receives 119 Stolen Artefacts, Says Efforts To Re-loot Thwarted

At the ceremony, the Asante king thanked AngloGold Ashanti, a South African mining company, for returning several items purchased on the open market. The mining giant returned some artefacts to Ghana in 2024.

The latest repatriation included 110 artefacts from the Barbier-Muller Museum collection in Geneva, assembled by collector Josef Muller in 1904.

Twenty-five other items were donated by British art historian Hermione Waterfield, who established the Tribal Art Department at Christie’s in 1971.

According to art historian and Manhyia Palace Museum director Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Waterfield’s gifts included a wooden drum believed to have been seized during the 1900 siege of Kumasi by British forces.

In 2024, the Manhyia Palace Museum received 67 restituted or loaned cultural objects from institutions including London’s British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum and the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles.