Gunmen have kidnapped five female students, a teacher and two gatemen of Tular Academy, Moruba, in Mariga Local Government Area of Niger State.

The Commissioner of Police in the state, Alhaji Adamu Usman, disclosed this when he led a combined team of police and military personnel on a visit to the school to assess the situation.

Usman said the incident occurred on March 1, at about 1:45 a.m. at the school’s premises.

He said the assessment visit was to enable the Police Command to deploy additional security tactics to tackle insecurity effectively.

He said the command had already launched a manhunt to track down the attackers and rescue the victims.

“We have since deployed Special Technical Squad and Armed Anti-Kidnapping Squad to identified areas with a view to rescuing the victims unhurt,’’ the commissioner said.

He said in spite of the huge landmass of the state, security agencies working in the area we’re working in synergy to curtail security challenges.

According to him, the existing inter-state security agencies collaboration has greatly assisted in achieving most of the successes recorded in dealing with the security challenges in the state.

Usman lamented that the bandits capitalised on the telephone network problem in the area to attack the primary school in the night.

He explained that because of the problem, the command only got to know about the incident 24 hours after the attack had occurred.

He also blamed the porous nature of the school and poor location as factors that enabled the bandits to strike. (NAN)