The heavily armed attackers raided the school in the town of Lassa, located in the Askira Uba district, while students were writing their final examinations. The casualties include a local teacher and a responding soldier.

The incident directly contradicts initial statements from the military, which claimed that authorities had rescued 10 students and that only one person remained unaccounted for.

However, the true scale of the mass abduction emerged on Tuesday when a local government councillor for the area, Ijagla Ijabila, shared a verified "list of students in captivity" with reporters.

The document details the missing students' genders alongside their parents' mobile phone numbers. An intelligence source subsequently showed AFP the exact same list, confirming the high number of missing youth.

Kidnapping for payment, targeting vulnerable students in particular, has become a routine tactic for both ideological jihadists and non-ideological "bandit" gangs operating across the conflict-hit northern and central regions of the country.

While the infamous 2014 kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls from Chibok by Boko Haram remains Nigeria's most notorious mass abduction, school raids continue to terrorize the nation.

Just last month, jihadists captured more than 40 pupils from Mussa village in Borno state, all of whom remain in captivity.

That same month, suspected jihadists rounded up dozens of schoolchildren from three different institutions in Oyo state.

The incident shocked security analysts as it marked a rare attack in southwest Nigeria, a region widely considered to be the safest part of the country.

Nigeria has been fighting a devastating jihadist insurgency since 2009, primarily concentrated in the northeast. While the overall violence has diminished since the peak of the conflict a decade ago, security experts have warned of a sudden increase in terror attacks in since 2025.