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- Parents sobbed, hugged their children and even kissed the ground in gratitude on Friday when they were reunited with dozens of kidnapped schoolchildren.
- Hundreds of adults rushed to find their offspring among the 344 dusty and stunned children who had arrived by bus in Katsina state.
- Those who were successful cheered and grabbed their children, but many more were still waiting in the early afternoon.
Parents sobbed, hugged their children and even kissed the ground in gratitude on Friday when they were reunited with dozens of schoolchildren who had been abducted a week earlier in northwestern Nigeria.
Hundreds of adults rushed to find their offspring among the 344 dusty and dazed children who had arrived by bus in Katsina state on Friday morning. Those who were successful cheered and grabbed their children, but many more were still waiting in the early afternoon.
“I feel like God has granted me paradise because I’m so happy,” said an exuberant Hamza Kankara after finding her son, Lawal, in the crowd.
Another man knelt down and kissed the ground, thanking God for the return of his young son, before hugging the boy and sobbing.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has come under increasing pressure to free children and deal with insecurity in the north.
One boy, who did not give his name, said his captors had told him to describe them as members of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, although he suspected they were armed bandits.
“They beat us in the morning, every night. We suffered a lot. They only gave us food once a day and water twice a day,” Arise from Nigeria told television.
Gunmen on motorcycles stormed the children’s boarding school in Kankara city in Katsina state a week ago, taking hundreds of them into a vast forest that spans four states.
Authorities said security services rescued them on Thursday. The army said it had acted with “credible intelligence” and released the 344 kidnapped children.
Many details surrounding the incident remain unclear, including who was responsible, why the children were abducted, whether the ransom was paid and how release was secured.
The kidnapping took hold of a country already outraged by widespread insecurity and evoked memories of the 2014 Boko Haram abduction of more than 270 school children in the northeastern city of Chibok.
The kidnapping of the children was particularly embarrassing for Buhari, who hails from Katsina state and has repeatedly said that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated”.
Any involvement of Boko Haram in this kidnapping would mark a geographical expansion in the militant group’s activities from its base in the northeast.
Tears of joy, prayers of thanks
Hours before the rescue of the children was announced on Thursday, an online video began circulating that allegedly showed Boko Haram militants with some of the children. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the images or who published them.
The rescued boy interviewed by Arise TV was one of those who had appeared in the online video.
“They said I should say they are Boko Haram and Abu Shekau gangs,” he said, referring to a name used by a Boko Haram leader. “Honestly speaking, they are not Boko Haram … They are just tiny little boys with big guns.”
Another of the released boys told Reuters that the kidnappers had initially taken them to a hideout.
“But when they saw a fighter plane, they changed location and hid us somewhere else. They gave us food, but it was very little,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, the children, flanked by soldiers and armed police, were brought to meet the governor. They then underwent medical checks before meeting with Buhari.
The anxious parents had waited hours to meet.
Hajiya Bilikisu, wearing a cream-colored veil, said she had begun to lose hope of seeing her son, Abdullahi Abdulrazak again.
“I was crying, crying with joy, when I saw them, my son” in the pictures after the launch, he told Reuters.
“They have to recover psychologically,” he said. “They went through a trauma. We have to try to counsel them, so that now they can become normal people.”
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