©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A boy holds up a placard protesting what a teacher, a local councilor and parents said were the abduction of hundreds of pupils by gunmen after Friday prayers in Kaduna, Nigeria, March 8 2024. REUTERS/Stringer/file Photo
By Ahmed Kingimi
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – The Nigerian army on Sunday rescued students and staff who were kidnapped by gunmen from a school in the country’s north earlier this month, the military said, days before the payment deadline of the ransom.
School officials and residents said 287 students were taken away on March 7 in the town of Kuriga in the northwestern state of Kaduna. A military spokesman said 137 hostages – 76 of them women and 61 men – were rescued in the early hours of Sunday in neighboring Zamfara state.
“In the early hours of March 24, 2024, the military, working with local authorities and government agencies across the country in a coordinated search and rescue operation, rescued the hostages,” Major General Edward said in a statement Buba.
A security source said the students were released into a forest and were being escorted to the capital of Kaduna for medical tests before being reunited with their families.
Kaduna Governor Uba Sani had previously estimated the number of abductees to be more than 200. Given the discrepancies in the reported numbers, it was unclear whether any hostages remained captured. Some Kuriga elders said Sani had told them that all the hostages had been freed.
Jibrin Aminu, spokesperson for the Kuriga parents, said they would clarify the numbers on Monday, when families will be given the chance to “account for their abducted children.”
The rescue came just days before a one billion naira ($690,000) ransom payment for their release was due.
Kidnappings in Nigerian schools were first carried out by the jihadist group Boko Haram, which ten years ago kidnapped 276 students from a girls’ school in Chibok, in the north-eastern state of Borno. Some girls were never released.
But the tactic has since been adopted by criminal gangs with no ideological affiliation.
Kidnappings by criminal gangs demanding ransoms have become an almost daily occurrence, especially in northern Nigeria, tearing apart families and communities who must pool savings to pay ransoms, often forcing them to sell land, livestock and grain to secure their release of their loved ones.