Terrorists Attack University Community, Kill One In North West Nigeria

Suspected terrorists, on Friday evening, attacked some satellite villages within the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, North West Nigeria.

The attack, which started a few minutes after 11 p.m., lasted nearly an hour and left one person, whom locals simply referred to as Usman, dead.

The villages are barely a ten-minute drive to the University, raising fear among students who stay in private hostels in the axis.

“We were about to close for the day around 11 p.m. when we started hearing gunshots. They were shooting sporadically. And everyone started to run for their lives,” Muhammed Sadiq, a local resident in Dundaye, told HumAngle. “One of the bullets hit Umaru. See, this is his blood,” he said, trailing the splashes of blood to a spot Usman eventually gave up the ghost. “He bled profusely before he died.”

A student of the University who stays at Gidan Sule, another village within the school area, said he was in his room when he heard reverberating gunfire. He said he had to escape to the University hostel.

“We were in our room when our neighbours came to tell us about the attack. Before we knew it, the gunshots were getting closer. We had to leave for the University hostels for our safety,” he said.

In North West Nigeria, terrorists are increasingly targeting students, especially female undergraduate students, borrowing a leaf from the infamous 2014 abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, by Boko Haram.

This new trend in the region, experts warn, could further stretch the significant gender enrolment gap in the region.

HumAngle reported that between September and October, terrorists abducted dozens of female university students in the region.

On Sept. 23, terrorists stormed some private hostels occupied by students of Federal University Gusau and abducted 22 female students. While eight were rescued and two escaped, the rest are still in captivity. 

Terrorists also abducted five female students of Federal University Dutsin-ma in Katsina barely ten days after the Gusau attack.

On Oct. 14, armed men again launched an attack on a private hostel used by university students in Gusau but were immediately repelled by soldiers, who blocked all the routes, before engaging in a gun duel that led to the escape of two students and the rescue of two others.