Numerous schools in the states of Kebbi, Niger, Katsina, Yobe, and Kwara were ordered to close.

Families and the nation, which has been suffering over the fate of hundreds of pupils kidnapped in northwest Nigeria, were relieved to learn of the children's rescue.

A Christian organisation interested in the case claims that the students made it out between Friday and Saturday in what is being described as a daring and dangerous attempt to escape their captors.

The instructors and pupils were removed from Papiri, Niger State's St. Mary's School. According to previous accounts, 12 teachers and 303 pupils were seized.

They are more numerous than the 276 kidnapped during the notorious Chibok mass kidnapping in 2014.

According to local authorities, at around 2:00 (01:00 GMT), armed men stormed St. Mary's and kidnapped students who were living there.

Mohammed Umaru Bongo, the governor of Niger State, said that it was "not a time for blame game" and declared on Saturday that all local schools would close.

"Everyone is weak," Dominic Adamu, whose daughters attend the school but were not accepted, said to the BBC. Everyone was caught off guard.

A frightened woman sobbed as she told the BBC that her nieces, ages six and thirteen, had been abducted, saying, "I just want them to come home."

In an effort to find the kids, the military, law enforcement, and neighbourhood vigilantes are searching the surrounding woodlands and isolated paths that the gunmen are thought to have taken.

St. Mary's School disobeyed an order to close all boarding facilities when intelligence warned of an increased risk of attacks, according to Niger state authorities. Regarding the accusation, the school has not responded.

In many parts of Nigeria, abduction for ransom by criminal gangs—known locally as bandits—has grown to be a serious issue.

In an effort to reduce the amount of money that criminal groups receive, ransom payments have been prohibited, but this has not had much of an impact.

The BBC has been informed that about 20 Muslim schoolgirls were abducted from a boarding school in Kebbi state on Monday.

All secondary schools and colleges have been forced to close by the local authorities.

Further south in Kwara state, a church was attacked, resulting in the deaths of two individuals and the kidnapping of 38 others.

In order to resolve the security concerns, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu postponed travel abroad, including to the G20 summit in South Africa this weekend.

The attacks this week come after President Donald Trump and other right-wing US officials claimed that Christians were being persecuted in Nigeria.

Politicians and activists in Washington have been accusing Islamist extremists of deliberately killing Christians for months. This assertion has been rejected by the Nigerian government.

Trump threatened to send troops into Nigeria "guns a-blazing" earlier this month if the country's government "continues to allow the killing of Christians."

Claims that Christians are being persecuted have been deemed "a gross misrepresentation of reality" by the Nigerian government.

A government source stated that "terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology - Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike" .

Jihadist organisations have been fighting the government in the northeast for over ten years.

Because most attacks occur in the country's predominantly Muslim north, organisations that track violence claim that Muslims make up the bulk of these organisations' victims.

In the heart of Nigeria, farmers, who are predominantly Christian, are regularly the target of violent attacks by herders, who are primarily Muslim.

However, analysts claim that rather than being driven by religion, these are frequently driven by competition for resources like land or water.

In 2014, 276 girls were abducted from their school in the town of Chibok by the extremist Islamist organisation Boko Haram.

Michelle Obama, the US First Lady at the time, intervened in a global effort to demand their return when the incident garnered international notice.

Up to 100 people are still unaccounted for, however many have subsequently either escaped or been set free.