Sixty-four days after terrorists abducted between 40 and 42 pupils from Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School in Borno State, affected families say they remain trapped in trauma amid what they describe as continued silence from the Tinubu administration.
Saturday marks exactly 64 days since heavily armed terrorists stormed Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School in the Askira/Uba Local Government Area of Borno State, carting away dozens of schoolchildren into the depths of the Sambisa Forest.
Sahara Reporters reports that More than two months later, the affected community remains trapped in trauma, worsened by what residents describe as a deafening silence from President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The mass abduction, which occurred on the morning of Friday, May 15, 2026, saw between 40 and 42 pupils forcibly taken by Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
Local community leaders and eyewitnesses recalled that the raid was executed with chilling precision, with armed terrorists on motorcycles descending on the school premises just 10 to 15 minutes after a routine military patrol had departed the village. While many terrified children scrambled into nearby bushes to escape, dozens were rounded up and herded away.
The school invasion formed part of a broader coordinated assault on predominantly Christian communities flanking the southern fringes of the Sambisa Forest, which left eight adults dead — including a day-old infant — and 23 local guards wounded.
In the 64 days since, families of the missing children say they feel completely abandoned by the federal government, even as community groups and distraught parents have organised appeals and demonstrations demanding a full-scale military rescue operation.
Despite these calls, there has been no official high-level delegation or formal address from the Tinubu administration regarding the whereabouts or rescue plans for the Mussa pupils.
The prolonged captivity underscores a wider crisis for basic education in the northeast, which has seen a resurgence in targeted school raids — including a June 29 attack on Government Day Secondary School in nearby Lassa, where terrorists in fake military fatigues disrupted NECO exams, killed a teacher, and kidnapped 37 more students.
For families in Askira/Uba, the ordeal draws painful parallels to the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping, as the community continues to await word on their children’s fate.
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