MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) – More than 300 schoolboys kidnapped by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria last week have been released, a government official said Thursday.
In an announcement on Nigerian state television, NTA, Katsina State Gov. Aminu Bello Masari said the 344 boarding school students were handed over to security officials and taken to the capital, where they will undergo a physical examination before being reunited with their families. .
“I think we can say… we recovered most of the guys, if not all,” said Masari. He did not disclose whether the government paid a ransom.
President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed their release, calling it “a great relief to their families, the entire country and the international community,” said a statement from his office. Amid outrage in the West African nation over insecurity in the north, Buhari noted that his government was successful in securing the release of previously kidnapped students. He added that the government “is well aware of its responsibility to protect the lives and property of the Nigerians”.
“We have a lot of work to do, especially now that we have reopened the borders,” said Buhari, who acknowledged that the Northwest region “poses a problem” where the government is “determined to resolve.”
Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for last Friday’s kidnapping of students at the Government Science Secondary School boys’ school in Katsina State village of Kankara. The jihadist group carried out the attack because it believes Western education is un-Islamic, group 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 be taken.
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 1 million have been displaced by the violence. The group has been mainly active in northeastern Nigeria, but kidnappings from the Kankara school have raised concerns that the insurgency is spreading to the northwest.
The government had said it was negotiating with the school’s attackers, who were originally described as bandits. Experts say the attack was likely carried out by local gangs, who have carried out 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.
Parents of the missing students gather daily at the school in Kankara. News of the students’ release came shortly after the release of a video Thursday by Boko Haram allegedly showing the kidnapped boys.
In the more than six-minute video seen by Associated Press journalists, the apparent kidnappers tell a boy to reiterate their demands that the government stop the search for them by troops and planes.
The video spread widely on WhatsApp and first appeared on a Nigerian news site, HumAngle, which frequently reports on Boko Haram.
Usama Aminu, a 17-year-old kidnapped student who eventually managed to escape, told the AP that his kidnappers were wearing military uniforms. He said he also saw teenagers with guns, some younger than him, helping the attackers.
He said the kidnapped boys tried to help each other as bandits beat them from behind to make them move faster and forced them to lie under tall trees when helicopters were heard overhead.
Aminu escaped at night. He was able to return home after being found by a resident in a mosque who gave him a change of clothes and money.
Government officials said earlier this week that police, air force and military have tracked the kidnappers to a hideout in the Zango / Paula forest.
The state of Katsina has closed all its boarding schools to prevent other kidnappings. The nearby states of Zamfara, Jigiwa and Kano have also closed schools as a precaution.
Masari said the government will work with the police to increase private security at the Kankara school “to make sure we don’t experience what we’ve been through for the past six days.”
There was only one police officer working at the school when it was attacked.
Friday’s kidnapping was a chilling 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 in the northeastern state of Borno. About 100 of those girls are still missing.
In 2018, Boko Haram Islamic extremists brought back nearly all 110 girls they had kidnapped from a boarding school in Dapchi and warned, “Never put your daughters in school again.”
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Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press reporter Lekan Oyekanmi in Katsina, Nigeria; and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed.