Gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern Nigeria before dawn on Monday, taking 25 schoolgirls and killing at least one staffer, with one of the students escaping her captors.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for abducting the girls from the boarding school in Kebbi state and their motivation was unclear.

Nigeria is facing a multidimensional security challenge, specifically from amorphous groups of armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping for ransoms - sometimes totalling thousands of dollars — and have been responsible for several high-profile abductions across Nigeria’s northern region.

Kidnappings, attacks on villages and along major roads have become common because of the limited security presence.

Those bandits are not connected to militant groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State West Africa Province, whose attacks on communities and government installations are motivated by religion.

Police said the boarding schoolgirls were taken from their dorms at 4 a.m. Monday. The school is in Maga, in the state’s Danko-Wasagu area.

Usman Muhammad, a parent who has two of his daughters in the school believes that this incident will affect the education of children in the community if nothing is done to counter the insecurity. “No child will go back to the school if adequate security is not provided,’ said Muhammad.

Armed groups have targeted school children in the region since 2014, when Boko Haram abducted 276 students from Chibok in Borno state. That abduction marked the beginning of a new era of fear, and dozens remain in captivity.

Since the Chibok abductions, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped, as armed groups increasingly find in abductions a lucrative way to fund other crimes and control villages in the nation’s mineral-rich but poorly policed region.

In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state of Kaduna.

Nonetheless, raids on schools have subsided in recent years as state governments implemented security measures in hot spots, including closing schools for an extended period of time.