Star Metro - Nigerian forces suffered casualties in Oyo kidnap rescue: army

The pupils, whose rescue was announced Friday, had been seized from three schools in Nigeria's Oyo state and held captive for nearly two months.

The army said the children and staff were rescued following "carefully planned and executed" operations alongside intelligence agencies, police and local vigilante groups.

"However, there were some casualties on the part of the security forces," it said, without elaborating.

The shock kidnapping, in Oyo's Oriire local government area, was blamed on militants from Ansaru, a Boko Haram splinter group known to operate in central Nigeria, extending into the southwest.

"I was almost shedding tears yesterday when I saw them. It was mental torture," Abdulfatai Buhari, a senator from Oyo state, told AFP, noting there were two and three-year-olds among those kidnapped.

"They were so frail," he added.

Nigeria has been fighting a jihadist conflict that over the years has seen armed Islamist groups spread and fracture outside their strongholds in the northeast.

But the attack in Oyo state sent shockwaves through a country where many had long written off such violence as a problem confined to the north.

There, mass kidnappings have become an increasingly regular tactic of both jihadists and armed gangs known as "bandits".

The Oyo abduction prompted protests across the country, a state-wide teachers' strike and high-profile condemnation -- all just months before the January 2027 presidential elections.

A spokesman for President Bola Tinubu on Saturday accused opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar of having "weaponised the kidnap as a campaign issue".

Southwest Nigeria -- home to economic capital Lagos -- has long been considered one of the safest regions in a country struggling with multiple security crises.

Oyo is one of Nigeria's most populous states, and its capital, Ibadan, is a major education hub.

- Students taken as 'leverage' -

Defence Minister Christopher Musa said last week the kidnappers had tried to use the students as "leverage" with the Nigerian government, which is holding some of their commanders.

He added the kidnappers threatened to kill their hostages if security forces moved in.

But the army said its operations, which lasted more than a month, targeted the kidnappers' wider networks and dismantled several hideouts in the forests of Old Oyo National Park.

Arrests across the country, meanwhile, "completely disorganised the group, exerted overwhelming pressure on them and ultimately led the terrorist group to 'unconditionally release' the pupils and teachers", said the military statement.

Addressing media outside the military clinic where the pupils are being treated, Oyo Governor Seyi Makinde said family visits were being organised -- including for "a small girl in there that has been asking for her mother".

"We have to do a bit of medical intervention," he said, adding there were "post-traumatic issues to be addressed".

Armed groups have long used mass school kidnappings in an attempt to extract ransoms and press other demands -- most infamously in April 2014 when Boko Haram jihadists abducted 276 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok.

A string of mass abductions in late 2025, including the kidnapping of two dozen schoolgirls in Kebbi state and the abduction of some 300 students and teachers in Niger state, drew renewed international attention to Nigeria's insecurity.

Around 40 other schoolchildren were taken by gunmen in Borno state, in the northeast, on the same day as the Oyo kidnapping.

They remain in captivity.

S.Lapointe--SMC