KANKARA, Nigeria – Boko Haram’s jihadist rebels in Nigeria have released a video allegedly showing some of the more than 300 schoolboys kidnapped from a government boarding school in the northwestern city of Kankara last week.
In the six-minute video seen by Associated Press journalists, the kidnappers of the students tell a boy to repeat the kidnappers’ demands that the government blow off its troops and planes to hunt them down.
A voice can be heard from behind the camera telling the boy what to say. The boy is clearly speaking under duress. The boy says they were kidnapped by a gang led by Boko Haram faction leader Abubakar Shekau.
He said some of those kidnapped had been murdered. The kidnappers ordered the children to ask for a ransom. The video spread widely on WhatsApp and first appeared on a Nigerian new site, HumAngle, which frequently reports on Boko Haram.
Earlier Thursday, one of the schoolboys who managed to escape related how he slipped away from his kidnappers.
Usama Aminu, 17, told The Associated Press about the attack on the school in the northwestern state of Katsina, Nigeria, in which men armed with AK-47 rifles abducted more than 300 students from the boys’ school.
It was late in the evening last Friday when the students heard gunshots, at first they thought they were from the nearby town. As soon as he and the other students at the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara realized that the school had been raided, they scrambled out of their dormitory and climbed the fence of the school in the pandemonium.
But Aminu was still not safe.
“After we climbed the gate, we heard voices telling us to come back,” he said. The boys came back ‘believing they were police officers. The bandits were unknown. They then gathered us in one place. It was then that we realized they were bandits wearing military uniforms, ”he said.
“We walked through the night in the bush and at dawn they found a spot and asked us to sit,” said Aminu.
Aminu, who is suffering from sickle cell anemia, has recently been transferred to Government Science Secondary School to be closer to his family and receive medical care for his condition.
In response to the kidnappings, Nigeria launched a rescue mission in which police, air force and military followed the kidnappers to their hideout in the Zango / Paula forest.
The attack, claimed by Boko Haram, Nigeria’s jihadist rebels, has sparked a protest in the West African nation against the government for not doing enough to stop attacks on schools in the north.
“When the bandits heard the sound of the helicopter hovering above, they asked us to lie under the big trees with our faces to the ground,” said Aminu.
During their walk, Aminu said they met young boys in their teens armed with guns. He said some were younger than him.
Exhausted from the trek, Aminu held on to the shoulders of two friends “while the bandits kept hitting people from behind so they could move faster.”
When it was dark, the boy decided to recite passages from the Quran. It was then that he managed to slip into the night unnoticed and hide in a mosque. A local eventually found him coughing and offered him clean clothes so he could leave his school uniform, he said.
He returned home around 11 p.m. on Sunday.
His father, Aminu Ma’le, told AP he was relieved but still worried about the others. “I can’t celebrate alone because the other boys are still missing,” the father said.
Aminu Bello Masari, governor of the state of Katsina, said 17 boys have been rescued since the attack, including 15 by the military, another by the police and a boy who was wandering the forest by residents. Aminu was one of those guys.
The school has more than 800 students and hundreds of others also managed to escape. But more than 300 remain detained by insurgents who are known to use child soldiers.
According to Garba Shehu, a spokesman for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, the government and the attackers are negotiating for the boys’ freedom. Parents of the missing students gather at school every day to eagerly await the news about their sons.
To prevent other school kidnappings, Katsina State has closed all its boarding schools. The nearby states of Zamfara, Jigiwa and Kano have also closed schools as a precaution.
Boko Haram has kidnapped the schoolboys because it believes Western education is un-Islamic, rebel leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video claiming responsibility for the attack, SITE Intelligence Group said.
They likely partnered with local bandits who have carried out increasingly deadly attacks in northwestern Nigeria this year, experts say.
Residents of Katsina plan to protest Thursday, saying the government is not doing enough to protect her youth.
Armed bandits have killed more than 1,100 in northwestern Nigeria since the beginning of the year, according to Amnesty International.
Boko Haram has been campaigning bloody for more than 10 years to introduce strict Islamic rule in northern Nigeria. Thousands have died and more than a million people have been displaced by the violence. Boko Haram has been mainly active in northeastern Nigeria, but kidnappings from the school in Katsina state have raised concerns that the insurgency is spreading to the northwest.
The kidnappings of the schoolboys are a frightening reminder of Boko Haram’s earlier attacks on schools. In February 2014, 59 boys were murdered when jihadists attacked Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe state.
In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls from a government boarding school in Chibok, northeast Borno State. About 100 of those girls are still missing.