A devastating targeted attack by armed gunmen on an unregistered orphanage in Nigeria’s north-central Kogi State has left 23 people abducted, with eight children still unaccounted for days after the assault, local authorities confirmed this week. The brazen Sunday raid also saw the owner of the unlicensed child care facility taken captive by the attackers, according to Kogi State Information Commissioner Kingsley Fanwo. Following a rapid, coordinated mobilization of local security agencies, 15 of the abducted children have been successfully rescued from captivity, Fanwo stated in an official briefing Monday.
To date, no armed faction has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack. But senior security sources familiar with regional instability note that Kogi State hosts an active operational cell of the jihadist insurgent group Boko Haram, and the area has already seen a string of violent, opportunistic attacks targeting vulnerable communities in recent months.
The orphanage attack is the latest high-profile incident in Nigeria’s growing national kidnap crisis, which has plagued regions across the country for years. Transnational criminal gangs regularly abduct civilians, including children, to demand large ransom payments. While the Nigerian federal government has formally outlawed ransom payments to kidnappers, the ban has done little to curb the frequency of these attacks, as criminal networks continue to profit from the practice despite increased security deployments.
In his Monday statement, Commissioner Fanwo emphasized that the targeted orphanage had been operating illegally in a remote, bushy rural area without the knowledge or official approval of state regulatory authorities. He issued a formal warning to all operators of orphanages, schools, and residential care institutions across the state to complete required regulatory registration and coordinate regularly with relevant government agencies, particularly amid the country’s ongoing volatile security environment.
Mass abductions of children at educational and care facilities have become increasingly common across northern Nigeria, where long-running insurgency and weak security infrastructure have created conditions for rampant kidnapping. This incident marks the first recorded attack specifically targeting an orphanage in the country. The attack echoes a much larger mass abduction in November 2025, when more than 300 students and their teachers were seized from a Catholic secondary school in neighboring Niger State, also in north-central Nigeria. All captives were eventually released in two separate batches, with the final group regaining freedom more than a month after their abduction. The Nigerian government has repeatedly denied widespread reports that it paid a large ransom to secure their release, or that it swapped two detained Boko Haram commanders for the hostages as part of a negotiated deal.
Nigerian authorities have reaffirmed their commitment to locating and rescuing the eight remaining missing children from the Kogi State orphanage attack, saying security operations are ongoing in the area. “The government remains fully committed to ensuring the rescue of all the victims,” Fanwo said.