“They took us to the forest, we walked for two days without eating anything and they hit us,” Murtala Sale, 14, told CNN.
“Some [of us] he felt sick because we hadn’t eaten for the two days, they selected the sick and gave them food to eat, ”he added.
The children, many in blankets and dusty, arrived in heavily guarded buses before disembarking and walking barefoot past palm-lined lines towards the building named after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
The boys sat in silence in front of the microphones of a theater while Masari spoke to the press.
“I will also take this opportunity to praise and thank the effort of the entire security apparatus,” he said. “To the parents, I think we thank Allah for His mercy. We have never given up hope.”
It was a memorable day for the state and the boys, he added, suggesting the kidnapping should be part of his “story” and “journey into adulthood.”
A 13-year-old boy named Jamilu Suleiman said the kidnappers took the children to a forest, where they spent days walking.
“They usually give guns and sticks to young children to earn us just to show off and meet their price. They gave us bread, a single peanut cake, all day,” he added.
Ashiru Malumfashi, the father of one of the abducted children, said he was traumatized by the abduction and the condition of the children.
“But the way the government has shown concern about it, we thank them and hope we don’t see this happen again.”
“We can’t quantify the level of trauma we’ve experienced,” another parent told CNN from outside the state house. “My son ‘s name is Ali Buhari … I will not send him back, I will not return him [to school]. ”
Masari spokesman Abdu Labaran told CNN on Thursday that Boko Haram was not involved, but that the boys were abducted by bandits posing as the Islamist terrorist group.
CNN has not been able to verify this independently.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari received the news in a statement posted on Twitter, saying, “This is a great relief for the entire country and the international community.”
Buhari also called on citizens to be “patient and fair” with the government amid fierce criticism of the country’s persistent security concerns.
Masari has dismissed these messages and said “local bandits” “imitate” his speech.
Unicef, the UN agency responsible for providing humanitarian aid to children, said too often in Nigeria children are the “target of the attack”.
“Attacks on educational facilities are a serious violation of children’s rights,” the agency’s Nigeria representative, Peter Hawkins, said in a statement on Friday. “This incident is a disturbing reminder of the heavy burden of violence on civilians in northwestern Nigeria, including children.”
Although kidnapping by rescuers by criminal elements has become more frequent, no kidnapping of this scale had been reported in Katsina State. He recalls the brutal kidnapping of 276 Chibok girls in 2014 by the Shekau group. More than 100 of these girls never returned home.