Hundreds of boys abducted last week from their boarding school in northwestern Nigeria were released on Thursday night after six days in captivity. But they had to do public relations for the government before they could go home.
The cameras were run on Friday as they were driven barefoot by soldiers carrying rifles and coquettish through the manicured grounds of the governor’s house in Katsina, 80 miles south of Kankara, the city where they had studied.
Looking dazed and still wearing dusty clothes, they were packed into a conference room, some crouched on the floor, others dwarfed by large leather chairs. Television reporters pressure microphones to them.
They were then given new clothes to change into and taken to a meeting with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
“The children are very lucky,” he told them.
Kidnapped by gunmen in a Dec. 11 attack on a government science high school in Kankara, a city in the northwest of the country, students had gone through a terrifying, grueling ordeal.
The kidnappers beat them, marched them for days through the thicket and gave them very little to eat and drink, they told local journalists. They were petrified by military planes flying overhead.
Boko Haram, the Islamist group that terrorized northeastern Nigeria, had claimed to be behind the mass abduction in Kankara, raising the worrying prospect that their coverage had extended far beyond their homeland. Although hundreds of kilometers away, last week’s attack bore a striking resemblance to the mass kidnappings of group schools in Chibok in 2014 and Dapchi in 2018.
A Kankara student was even forced to record a video message saying they are being held by “an Abu Shekau gang” – referring to the longtime leader of Boko Haram.
But the government and many of the parents have described the kidnappers not as terrorists, but as “bandits,” the local term for gangs of criminals who organize frequent attacks in the northwest of the country.
And on Friday, so did the boy who had in the video, under duress, the description of the kidnappers as members of Boko Haram.
“Honestly, they are not Boko Haram,” the boy, identified by a family member as Sani Abdulhamid, told a Nigerian television station after his release, looking shaken and distracted in a room full of classmates. reporters and officials were pushing him.
He said they were fed only once each day and watered twice, but were constantly beaten. He said gang members beat some of the youngest boys with large guns. “Little, little boys,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to explain.”
The government insisted that it had not paid any ransom for the release of the boys. Aminu Masari, the governor of Katsina state, where they were abducted, said: “It was purely negotiation.” His counterpart, the governor of Zamfara state, where they were released, said he had personally persuaded the kidnappers to release them unharmed.
Kidnapping is a growing concern in Nigeria, where gang violence, armed robbery, terrorism and piracy are rampant. More than $ 18 million was paid to kidnappers between 2011 and 2020, according to a report by Nigerian consulting firm SB Morgen, which said the kidnapping for ransom had accelerated sharply in the past four years.
And the kidnappers are no longer just the rich. Poor villagers are also being abducted, with ransoms of between $ 1,000 and $ 150,000. Mass abductions are most common in the north, where the death toll from the incident is also much higher.
As the overworked and insufficiently abusive West African police force has failed to protect many of its citizens, the gangs have been able to function more and more. Vigilance groups have also been formed to protect communities, often exacerbating tensions and leading to even greater insecurity.
The government says it is addressing this.
“Our children should not go to school in trouble,” Nigerian Information Minister Lai Mohammed told a news conference in Abuja, the capital, on Friday. “And we will not be upset until all Nigerians are able to go to bed at night with both eyes closed.”
However, residents of Kankara and the entire northwest of the country probably have several sleepless nights. The conflict over land and grazing rights, fueled by weapons crossing borders, has caused death, disability and displacement there in recent years.
But for schoolchildren’s parents, their release is a welcome memory.
Many parents did not answer calls on Friday night. Desperate to see their sons, they rushed to the Government House, the official residence of the governor of Katsina, where the boys were led from one photo to another.
But Abdulkadir Musbau, whose 12-year-old son Abdullahi was among the children taken, picked up the phone. She was not allowed to see her son, he said. He had to wait until the president finished talking to them and until medical checks were made. But he had been given a few minutes with Abdullahi on the phone.
“I was so happy when I talked to him,” Mr. Musbau said. “It’s a huge relief for me.”