LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – Authorities in northern Nigeria have announced that three separate groups of abducted students have been released within a 24-hour period, prompting speculation on Friday afternoon that they had been paid large rescues to gunmen guilty of a period of recent kidnappings.
Among those now free are some of the youngest children taken hostage in Nigeria, a group of 90 students who had spent three months in captivity. Hours after those youths were transferred to the state capital of Niger, Zamfara state police said they had also released 15 older students there.
At the end of Friday, news of a third hostage release arrived in Kaduna state. Thirty-two more students from a Baptist institute in early July had also been released, according to the Rev. Joseph Hayab, president of the Kaduna state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria.
The wave of releases comes after more than 1,000 students have been abducted since December, according to an AP account. Although previous school kidnappings had been blamed on Islamic extremists in the northeast, authorities have only said the bandits are behind the latest kidnappings for rescue.
“Happiness cannot be quantified,” said Yahya Aliyu Babangida, 54, a teacher with two children aged 7 and 17 who had been abducted from Tali’s Salihu Tanko Islamic School in late May.
Early gunmen kidnapped even preschoolers, to leave them behind when they could not keep pace in the nearby forest. Some who spent months in captivity were only 4 years old and authorities said on Friday that a child had died during the ordeal. Several others were in medical treatment after being released Thursday at the end.
“They are exposed to this severe climate, with no food, no mosquitoes everywhere,” he said. “Some had never been out of the comfort of their home.”
News of the release of children was held across Nigeria, where kidnappings have intensified pressure on the government to do more to secure educational facilities in remote areas.
But questions remained Friday about how much a ransom had been paid to secure the release of the children and, if so, whether this could in turn fuel new kidnappings by unknown armed groups called locally bandits.
Muhammad Musa Kawule, 42, recognized the intermediaries who were paying in hopes of securing the release of his 6-year-old daughter.
“I’ve spent a lot of money, but I’m happy today,” he told The Associated Press on Friday. He did not specify how much he had paid or whether government officials had participated.
The youths were later transferred to the state capital of Niger, Minna, where they underwent medical check-ups and met with the governor. The video showed dozens of preschoolers coming out of white minibuses, the girls wearing long blue hijabs known as chadors.
Although Nigeria has seen a lot of school kidnappings for rescue, the kidnappings of the state of Niger left people dismayed because the children were very young. The ramifications could also be long-lasting, as parents reconsider whether to send their children to school.
“This has affected people’s morale and confidence and has even made parents think twice before sending their children to school,” said Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani Bello , on the abduction of children. “We will do whatever it takes to bring (the kidnappers) to justice.”
As the attacks have grown in the north, there are also signs that they are becoming more violent.
After a kidnapping at a Kaduna state university earlier this year, gunmen demanded ransoms equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They killed five students to force the parents of other students to raise the money and later released 14 of them.
Also on Friday, Zamfara State Police spokesman Mohammed Shehu said on Friday another 15 students had been handed over to officials, 11 days after they were abducted from the College of Agriculture and Animal Science, in the northwest of the province of Nigeria.
It was not immediately known how they were rescued, but students are being cared for by Zamfara state officials and will soon be reunited with their parents, authorities said.
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Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press journalists Ajayi Taiwo Oluwole in Minna (Nigeria) and John Shiklam in Kaduna (Nigeria) also collaborated.