Supporters urged authorities to rescue hundreds of kidnapped schoolboys in the northwestern state of Katsina, Nigeria, on December 17.
Photo:
kola sulaimon / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
More than 300 schoolboys kidnapped by gunmen from their boarding school in northwestern Nigeria last Friday were handed over to government security agencies late Thursday, Nigerian officials said, sparking bursts of relief and joy in Africa’s most populous country. fears that they would become long-term hostages to jihadist militants.
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Thursday, Aminu Bello Masari, the governor of the state of Katsina, announced in a television interview that 344 of the boys had been handed over to the state authorities in the forest of neighboring Zamfara state, more than a hundred and fifty kilometers from their school in Katsina stands.
The freed hostages would be taken to Katsina for immediate medical attention and likely arrive around midnight, he said.
Other local officials said the boys would meet with President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday.
Jihadist group Boko Haram had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and said on Tuesday that it had confiscated students from Kankara Government Science Secondary School to punish them for “un-Islamic practices.”
Hours before the governor’s announcement on Thursday, Boko Haram released a video claiming to show dozens of the schoolboys. In the grainy six-minute video, the hostages said some of their classmates had died while in detention and begged the government to negotiate their release.
Many of the details surrounding the kidnapping, in a remote agricultural area with poor communication, remain unclear, including the true count of the number of schoolboys taken.
Neither Mr. Masari nor the other state governors who hailed the release provided details of the deal to secure their release.
Teenagers Binta Umma and Maimuna Musa were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Madagali, Nigeria in 2016. They were forced to marry and sent to die on a suicide mission. In this video, the girls tell the story of their survival. Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik for The Wall Street Journal (originally published July 26, 2019)
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