More than 300 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren freed: official

More than 300 schoolchildren abducted last week by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria have been released, says the governor of Katsina state.

In an announcement on Nigerian state television, NTA, Governor Aminu Bello Masari said that the 344 boarding school students were turned over to security officials and taken to the capital, Katsina, where they would undergo physical exams before reuniting with their families.

“I think we can say … we have recovered most of the children, if not all,” Masari said. He did not disclose whether the government paid any ransom.

President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed their release, calling it “a great relief to their families, the entire country and the international community.”

Amid a protest against the West African country’s government over insecurity in the north, Buhari noted his administration’s successful efforts to secure the release of previously abducted students, adding that the leadership “is well aware of its responsibility to protect life and property of Nigerians. “

“We have a lot of work to do, especially now that we have reopened the borders,” Buhari said, noting that the northwest region “presents a problem” that the administration “is determined to address.”

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the abduction last Friday of students from the Government Science Secondary School for boys in Kankara village in Katsina state.

The jihadist group carried out the attack because it believed that Western education was not Islamic, faction leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video earlier this week.

More than 800 students were present at the time of the attack. Hundreds escaped, but more than 330 are believed to have been taken.

The government had said it was negotiating with the attackers, originally described as bandits. Experts say the attack was likely carried out by local gangs, who have staged increasingly deadly attacks in northwestern Nigeria this year, and could possibly have been collaborating with Boko Haram.

Armed bandits have killed more than 1,100 people since the beginning of the year in the region, according to Amnesty International.

For more than 10 years, Boko Haram has participated in a bloody campaign to introduce a strict Islamic regime in northern Nigeria. Thousands have died and more than 1 million have been displaced by the violence.

The group has been active mainly in northeastern Nigeria, but after the school kidnappings in Katsina state, there are concerns that the insurgency is expanding to the northwest.

The parents of the missing students have been meeting daily at the Kankara school. News of the release of the students came shortly after the release of a Boko Haram video allegedly showing the abducted children.

In the more than six-minute video that Associated Press reporters watched, the alleged captors tell a boy to repeat their demands that the government suspend its search for troops and planes.

The video was widely circulated on WhatsApp and first appeared on a Nigerian news site, HumAngle, which often reports on Boko Haram.

Usama Aminu, a 17-year-old kidnapped student who was finally able to escape, told the AP that his captors were wearing military uniforms. He said he also saw armed teenagers, some younger than him, helping the attackers.

He said the kidnapped children tried to help each other while bandits whipped them from behind to make them move faster and forced them to lie down under large trees when helicopters were heard above.

Aminu escaped at night. He was able to return home after a mosque resident found him and gave him a change of clothes and money.

Government officials said earlier this week that police, the air force and the army tracked the kidnappers to a hideout in the Zango / Paula forest.

The Katsina state closed all its boarding schools to prevent further kidnappings. The nearby states of Zamfara, Jigiwa and Kano have also closed schools as a precaution.

Masari said the government will work with the police to increase private security at the Kankara school “to ensure that we do not experience what we have experienced in the last six days.”

Only one police officer was working at the school when she was attacked.

Friday’s kidnapping was a chilling reminder of previous Boko Haram attacks on schools. In February 2014, 59 children were killed when jihadists attacked the Buni Yadi Federal Government College in Yobe state.

In April 2014, Boko Haram abducted more than 270 female students from a government boarding school in Chibok, in the northeastern state of Borno. About 100 of those girls are still missing.

In 2018, Islamic extremists from Boko Haram brought back almost all of the 110 girls they had kidnapped from a boarding school in Dapchi and warned: “Don’t put your daughters back in school.”