NECO Exam Disrupted as Gunmen Abduct Six in Kogi
Terror walked into a Nigerian classroom again on Tuesday evening when armed men stormed Government Secondary School, Odo-Ekina, in the Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State, and seized the school principal, a National Examinations Council ad hoc official and four students who were seated for the ongoing NECO Senior School Certificate Examination.
The Kogi State Police Command, in a statement issued on Wednesday by its spokesperson, ASP Salisu Oyiza, confirmed that the attack occurred on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at about 5:25 p.m. while candidates were writing their examination. “During the incident, four students, the school principal and one NECO ad hoc staff member were abducted by the attackers,” the command said. It added that a combined team of the police and other security agencies immediately launched a search and rescue operation, that one of the abducted students has been rescued, and that efforts are ongoing to secure the safe rescue of the remaining victims and apprehend the perpetrators.
According to the command, the Commissioner of Police in Kogi State, Naziru Kankarofi, proceeded to the scene alongside the Brigade Commander and the State Security Adviser to Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo for an on the spot assessment. The police promised a fuller statement once more verified information becomes available.
The raid did not happen in isolation. Barely days earlier, the same command had confirmed a far more unusual abduction. On July 9, 2026, along the Ochadamu-Ejule Expressway, armed hoodlums attacked a Hummer bus conveying a corpse from Lokoja towards the eastern part of the country and abducted the occupants into the bush. The remains, later recovered, were those of a Federal Road Safety Corps official, Augustine Ikwue, who had died in Lokoja and was being taken to Otukpo, Benue State, for burial. The abandoned vehicle and casket were recovered, and the casket was evacuated to the Elemona Mortuary in Ejule.
What makes the Odo-Ekina attack particularly chilling is its timing. It struck an active examination hall, the second such assault on candidates within a fortnight. On June 29, 2026, gunmen hit Government Day Secondary School in Lassa, Askira/Uba Local Government Area of Borno State. The attack occurred at about 9:00 a.m., when gunmen reportedly disguised in military and forest guard uniforms stormed the school and opened fire, forcing students and teachers to flee. One teacher was killed and another sustained gunshot injuries, while several candidates were taken away. Residents alleged that Nigerian military troops stationed in the area had left on a patrol to Uba, about 16 kilometres away, just before the attackers struck. Troops under Operation Hadin Kai later rescued 10 abducted NECO candidates and teachers, while search operations continued for one remaining victim.
The Kogi abduction also lands while the country is still absorbing the trauma of the South West, a region long thought to be insulated from the mass school kidnappings associated with the North. On May 15, 2026, heavily armed gunmen launched a coordinated attack on three schools in the Esiele and Yawota communities of Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State, marching off with 39 pupils and seven teachers, including the principal, Rachael Alamu. An assistant headmaster, Joel Adesiyan, was shot and killed during the raid, and days into the captivity the abductors beheaded a mathematics teacher, Michael Oyedokun. A second teacher, Esiyan Adegboye, popularly called Deacon, was also killed. Investigators later linked the attackers to dislodged Boko Haram fighters operating under the Ansaru faction, who had camped inside the Old Oyo National Park forest.
The Oyo victims regained freedom on July 10 after 56 days, in an operation that has since been held up as a model. The breakthrough came through an intelligence led operation coordinated by the Office of the National Security Adviser through its National Counter Terrorism Centre, drawing on the Army, Navy and Air Force special forces, the Police, the Department of State Services, the National Intelligence Agency, the NSCDC, and local vigilantes and hunters working with the Amotekun Corps. Notably, no ransom was paid. Recounting the ordeal after the victims were handed to Governor Seyi Makinde, Mrs Alamu said, “We were in the forest, in the open, most of the time, under the sun and under the rain, with the children.” She disclosed that she had spent 28 years in teaching with about four years left to retirement, and admitted that returning to a rural posting would now, in her words, “take the grace of God.”
These are not isolated tragedies but the latest entries in a decade long pattern. The abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, in April 2014 opened an era in which classrooms became hunting grounds. It was followed by the seizure of 113 students from Dapchi, Yobe State, in February 2018, of whom Leah Sharibu remains in captivity for refusing to renounce her faith. Then came the industrial wave of 2020 and 2021: over 300 boys from Kankara, Katsina State, in December 2020, 27 students from Kagara, Niger State, in February 2021, and more than 300 girls from Jangebe, Zamfara State, in the same month. In March 2024, gunmen abducted 287 students from Government Secondary School, Kuriga, Kaduna State, and killed one vigilante.
The scale has, if anything, worsened. In November 2025, bandits raided St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, kidnapping 315 schoolchildren and staff, with reports suggesting the government paid approximately N2 billion to secure their release. That same month, 25 female students were abducted from Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School, Maga, in Kebbi State, in a pre dawn raid.
The cumulative figures are sobering. By one tally, at least 2,531 students have been kidnapped from over a dozen schools by armed groups since 2014, in what has grown into a lucrative criminal enterprise. An earlier count by Save the Children put the number at 1,683 schoolchildren kidnapped since the 2014 Chibok abduction, with over 180 schoolchildren killed and nearly 90 injured in 70 attacks between April 2014 and December 2022, and an estimated 60 school staff kidnapped and 14 killed in the same period. The wider kidnapping economy dwarfs even these numbers. Analysis by SBM Intelligence found that between July 2023 and June 2024 alone, at least 7,568 people were kidnapped in 1,130 cases across the country, with kidnappers demanding about N11 billion in ransom and receiving N1 billion.
The educational cost compounds the human one. According to UNICEF, nearly one in three Nigerian children were already out of school before this latest surge, and by some estimates Nigeria’s out of school population has roughly doubled over the past decade, rising from about 10 million to nearly 20 million. Each raid on a school hardens the calculation for frightened parents, particularly in rural communities, where the fear of abduction pushes families to keep children, especially girls, at home.
Government has not been idle on paper. The Safe Schools Initiative was launched after the Chibok abduction to protect vulnerable schools through improved security infrastructure and coordinated protection measures. Yet more than a decade on, its impact remains difficult to discern, and the continued vulnerability of schools suggests the initiative exists more in policy documents than in practice. The recurring detail that soldiers had withdrawn shortly before attacks, alleged in both the Borno and Kebbi cases, has fed persistent questions about the reliability of protection at examination centres.
For now, attention returns to the forests around Dekina, where families of the four abducted pupils, the principal and the examination official wait for word. The Oyo operation showed that a coordinated, intelligence led response can free captives without enriching their captors. Whether that template can be repeated in Kogi, and whether the nation can finally make the walk to an examination hall safe, is the test that the Odo-Ekina abduction has once again placed before the authorities.