The abducted Nigerian boys were released, a state official says

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More than 300 schoolchildren were missing for nearly a week, following an attack on the Kankara government science high school in Katsina state. The Nigerian military rescued 344 of them on Thursday afternoon, who are being transferred to the state capital, said Abdu Labaran, a spokesman for state Governor Aminu Bello Masari.

Boko Haram did not participate, he added, but the boys were abducted by bandits posing as the Islamist terrorist group.

CNN has not been able to verify this independently.

Some of the abducted children had addressed the Nigerian government in a video posted earlier on Thursday, bearing the Boko Haram logo.

In the video, a guy in a white shirt looks like someone off camera has helped him make the claims on behalf of the captors. He calls on the Nigerian government to close schools teaching “Western education” and says government troops sent to find the boys should withdraw.

The video shows dozens of children under a tree looking tired. The voice of the video claims to be Abubakar Shekau, leader of one of the Boko Haram factions.

Masari confirmed to CNN on Thursday that the children in the video are some of the abducted students. However, he discussed the voice claiming to be Shekau and said the “local bandits” were “imitating” his speech.

Earlier in the week, a man claiming to be Shekau had said the group was responsible for the kidnapping in a brief audio message shared with Nigerian media and reviewed by CNN.

Speaking to CNN’s Becky Anderson on Wednesday, Masari did not completely dismiss the message, but warned that “more concrete evidence” was needed before confirming Boko Haram’s involvement.

Although kidnappings by rescuers by criminal elements in Katsina state have experienced a disturbing increase, a kidnapping of this scale is unprecedented. He recalls the brutal kidnapping of 276 Chibok girls in 2014 by the Shekau faction. More than 100 of these girls never returned home.

In 2018, a Boko Haram separatist faction known as ISWAP kidnapped more than 100 girls in Dapchi. All but one were released weeks later, after negotiations.

Obiageli Ezekwesili, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement and former Minister of Education in Nigeria, said she was “surprised” that the government had allowed another such kidnapping to take place.

“For me, anything that has happened on the ground is a testament to the fact that governance is ineffective,” Ezekwesili told CNN’s Connecta World on Tuesday.

CNN’s Stephanie Busari and David McKenzie contributed to this report.

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