Two students of Federal Government College Yauri have explained to Dateline Nigeria how a number of their colleagues were abducted today by gunmen.
Dateline Nigeria is not mentioning the names of the students for security reasons.
The students, who are in JSS 3, said the bandits stormed the school at about 12pm and gathered hundreds of students outside the gate before taking them away on motorcycles.
The students said the gunmen had written a letter to the school on Monday, listing names of 10 students from wealthy backgrounds and their parents, threatening to attack the school by 12pm today.
They told Dateline Nigeria that the letter was dismissed by a section of staff as a ploy by students to force early closure of the school.
Contingents of mobile policemen were, however, deployed to forestall any eventuality, they said.
“Today, after we finished our examination and retired to our hostels, one of our teachers came to our dormitory at Jaja House and invited four of us. While we were discussing with him, we started hearing gunshots,” one of the students said.
“The mobile policemen deployed to the school ran to us and told us to go hide. Some of our teachers asked us to go into the exam hall and they locked us inside.
“Other students were equally locked up in another class and staffroom. The teachers tried to save as many students as they could,” he said.
The other students said he was among those that were brought out of the school by the gunmen.
“I was just so lucky because they brought me outside to the gate together with other students where they put students on motorcycles and took them away,” the other student who spoke to Dateline Nigeria said.
“”One of them grabbed my hand and as he was about placing me on his bike, he discovered that the tyre had a puncture so he released me and shot at the motorcycle’s tank. After that, he joined another gunmen on another motorcycle and left,”.he said.
The students said a policeman was killed while two other students, a female and male, were shot.
“They took away so many students, most of them girls. The only students they did not take at the school’s gate were those they had no motorcycles to convey,” he.said.
