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 announcement on Nigerian state television, NTA, Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari said the 344 students at the boarding school had been handed over to security officials and brought to the state capital, where they will receive physical examinations before to reunite with their families. .
“I think we can say … we recovered most, if not all, of the boys,” Masari said. He did not disclose whether the government paid any ransom.
President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed their release, calling it “a great relief for their families, for the whole country and for the international community,” according to a statement from his office. Amid a West African nation protest over insecurity in the north, Buhari noted his administration’s successful efforts to secure the release of previously abducted students. He added that the government “is extremely 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,” Buhari said, acknowledging that the North-West region “has a problem” that the administration is determined to deal with. “
Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the abduction of students at the government science high school for boys in Kankara village in Katsina state on Friday. The jihadist group carried out the attack because it considers Western education to be non-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 were believed to have been taken.
For more than 10 years, Boko Haram has been engaged in a bloody campaign to introduce strict Islamic rule in northern Nigeria. Thousands were killed and more than 1 million were violently displaced. The group has been active mainly in northeastern Nigeria, but with the abductions at the Kankara school, there is concern that the insurgency is spreading to the northwest.
The government said it was negotiating with the school’s attackers, originally described as bandits. Experts say the attack was probably committed by local gangs, which have staged increasingly deadly attacks in northwestern Nigeria this year and may have collaborated with Boko Haram. Armed bandits have killed more than 1,100 people in the region since the beginning of the year, according to Amnesty International.
The parents of the missing students gathered daily at the school in Kankara. The news of the students’ release came shortly after the release of a Boko Haram video on Thursday, which showed the boys abducted.
In the video of more than six minutes seen by the Associated Press journalists, the apparent captors tell a boy to repeat his requests for the government to cancel their 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 kidnapped young man who finally managed to escape, told the AP that his captors were wearing military uniforms. He said he also saw teenagers throwing weapons, some younger than him, helping the attackers.
He said the abducted boys tried to help each other, while the bandits whipped them from behind to make them move faster and forced them to lie under large trees when helicopters were heard upstairs.
Aminu escaped at night. He was able to return home after being found by a resident of 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 were following the kidnappers in a hideout in the Zango / Paula forest.
Katsina State has closed all boarding schools to prevent further abductions. The nearby states of Zamfara, Jigiwa and Kano also have schools closed as a precaution.
Masari said the government would work with police to increase private security at Kankara School “to make sure we don’t experience what we’ve been through for the past six days.”
Only one police officer was working at the school when she was attacked.
Friday’s abduction was a worrying 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 brought back almost all 110 girls they abducted from a boarding school in Dapchi and warned: “Never put your daughters back in school.”
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Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press reporters Lekan Oyekanmi from Katsina, Nigeria; and Bashir Adigun from Abuja, Nigeria, contributed.