MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) – More than 300 schoolchildren abducted last week by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria have been released, a government official said on Thursday.
In an ad on Nigeria state television, NTA, Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari said the 344 students at the boarding school were handed over to security officials and taken to the capital of the state, where physical exams will be done before reuniting with their families. .
“I think we can say … we’ve recovered most of the boys, if not all of them,” Masari said. He did not reveal whether the government paid any ransom.
According to a statement from his office, President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed her release, calling it “a great relief for her families, for the whole country and for the international community.” Amid a cry in the West African nation for insecurity in the north, Buhari noted the successful efforts of his administration to secure the release of previously abducted students. He added that the government “is well aware of its responsibility to protect the lives and property of Nigerians.”
“We have a lot of work to do, especially now that we have reopened the borders,” said Buhari, who acknowledged that the northwest region “presents a problem” that the administration “is determined to deal with.”
Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for last Friday’s abduction of students at the government science high school in the city of Kankara, Katsina state. The jihadist group carried out the attack because it believes Western education is not Islamic, faction leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video earlier this week. More than 800 students attended at the time of the attack. Hundreds escaped, but more than 330 were believed to have been taken.
For more than ten years, Boko Haram has been involved in a bloody campaign to introduce a strict Islamic government in northern Nigeria. Thousands have been killed and more than a million displaced by violence. The group has been active mainly in northeastern Nigeria, but with the kidnappings of the Kankara school, there is concern that the insurgency will spread to the northwest.
The government had said it was negotiating with the school’s attackers, originally described as bandits. Experts say the attack was probably carried out by local gangs, which have attacked increasingly deadly in northwestern Nigeria this year and could possibly have collaborated with Boko Haram. According to Amnesty International, armed bandits have killed more than 1,100 people since the beginning of the year in the region.
The parents of the missing students have met daily at Kankara School. The news of the students’ release came shortly after a Boko Haram video was released Thursday that allegedly showed the abducted boys.
In the more than six-minute video seen by Associated Press reporters, the apparent captors tell a boy to repeat his demands for the government to cancel the search by troops and planes.
The video circulated widely on WhatsApp and first appeared on a Nigerian news site, HumAngle, which often reports on Boko Haram.
Usama Aminu, a 17-year-old abducted student who was finally able to escape, told the AP that her captors were wearing military uniforms. He said he also saw teenagers with guns, some younger than him, helping the attackers.
He said the abducted boys tried to help each other as the bandits whipped them from behind to make them advance 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 being found by a resident at a mosque who gave him a change of clothes and money.
Government officials said earlier this week that police, the air force and the army tracked down the kidnappers to a hideout in the Zango / Paula forest.
Katsina State closed all its boarding schools to prevent further kidnappings. The nearby states of Zamfara, Jigiwa and Kano also have schools closed as a precaution.
Masari said the government will work with police to increase private security at the Kankara school “to make sure we don’t experience what we’ve been through for the last six days.”
Only one police officer was working at the school when she was attacked.
Friday’s abduction was a gruesome reminder of Boko Haram’s previous attacks on schools. In February 2014, 59 boys were killed when jihadists attacked Buni Yadi Federal Government College in Yobe state.
In April 2014, Boko Haram abducted more than 270 schoolgirls from a government boarding school in Chibok, northeastern Borno State. About 100 of these girls are still missing.
In 2018, Boko Haram Islamic extremists recovered almost all 110 girls who had been abducted from a Dapchi boarding school and warned, “Don’t put your daughters back in school.”
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Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press reporters Lekan Oyekanmi in Katsina, Nigeria; and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed.