Police commissioner Tanko Lawan said the girls were abducted Monday night from a school in Chibok, Borno state.
They were ordered on to the back of a lorry - with some escaping and running for their lives.
A State Security Service official said gunmen killed a soldier and police officer guarding the school and took off with at least 100 students.
Gunmen abducted a group of girls from a secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria late Monday night, officials say
President Goodluck Jonathan at the scene of the bombing, thought to have been carried out by Boko Haram
The men are believed to be members of the Boko Haram Islamist group which has attacked schools in the northeast before as part of their anti-government rebellion.
The military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Education Commissioner for Borno State Inuwa Kubo confirmed the incident at Chibok.
He told reporters authorities were still trying to confirm the exact number of girls abducted as several students fled into the bush in the darkness during the attack.
Audu Musa, who teaches in another public school in the area, said: 'Over 100 female students in our government secondary school at Chibok have been abducted.
'Musa said he saw eight bodies in the area on Tuesday morning, but did not give the identity of the victims. Things are very bad here and everybody is sad,' he said.
Twin blasts at a bus station packed with morning
commuters on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital killed up to 75 people,
reports suggest
Borno state's education authorities had last month ordered all of its schools closed to protect children after Islamists killed dozens of pupils in a February attack against a boarding school in neighbouring Yobe state.
But a Borno education official, who asked not to be named, said the female students had been back at the Chibok school writing exams.
Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language means broadly 'Western education is sinful', says it wants to carve out a separate Islamic state in Nigeria and has targeted schools, as well as Christian churches and police and government offices, in its violent insurrection against the Nigerian state.
The raid on the school followed a bomb blast on Monday at a crowded bus station on the outskirts of the Nigerian capital Abuja, which killed more than 70 people.
President Goodluck Jonathan said he suspected Boko Haram was behind the bombing.
Extremists also are blamed for Monday morning's explosion at a busy bus station in Nigeria's capital that killed at least 75 people and wounded 141.
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