Hundreds of freed Nigerian schoolboys to be reunited with families

More than 300 schoolboys kidnapped a week ago in north-west Nigeria are to be reunited with their families after they were brought to safety.

The 344 boys, whose abduction was carried out by local bandit groups and claimed by the Islamist militants Boko Haram, were rescued on Thursday night from a forest enclave, according to the governor of Katsina state, Aminu Masari.

The boys arrived in Katsina City on Friday morning, awaiting their parents. The Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, himself from the north-western state, was expected to meet the boys on Friday after they underwent medical checks.

The boys were taken to a hall at the Katsina government premises where they were surrounded by dozens of reporters and photographers and the governor gave an address before the media. A few parents were there but most were on their way or still in Kankara.

Questions remain, however, about the degree of involvement by Boko Haram in one of the largest recorded abductions in Nigeria, and whether all of the boys have been rescued. School and government officials have been unable to provide the exact number of boys at the school, with government officials and local residents providing conflicting figures for those registered and those abducted by gunmen last Friday night.

More than 800 students are thought to have been at the Government Science secondary school in Kankara Town when it was attacked but hundreds escaped. Some of the children who fled said more than 500 were taken.

Government officials had initially said 333 were abducted but Masari said on Thursday, “at the moment, 344 of the students have been handed over to security agents. I think we have recovered most of the boys if not all of them.”

Earlier on Thursday morning, fears for the boys grew when Boko Haram released footage purporting to show some of the children. In the video, many looked dishevelled and exhausted, clustered under a tree in a forested area.

One of the boys in the footage, who appeared coerced into speaking, called for the closure of all non-Qur’anic schools and said government troops sent to find the boys should be turned around.

Yet state government officials insisted they had made contact with the assailants who were known to them. Leaders of armed bandit gangs that have terrorised daily life in north-west Nigeria are known to state government officials in the region, who have attempted to negotiate with the groups and have signed controversial peace deals that have later unravelled.

Katsina’s government deny a ransom was paid, yet the swift negotiations and the confidence from governing officials point to a complicated web of criminal gangs, communal groups and state authorities, amid deepening insecurity across the region.

Security sources told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday that the operation was carried out on Boko Haram’s orders by a notorious gangster called Awwalun Daudawa in collaboration with Idi Minorti and Dankarami, two other bandits with strong local followings.

Many of the groups are made up of ethnically Fulani assailants, evolving from a conflict between Fulani pastoralists that span the Sahel and farming communities.

The armed groups operate from hideouts in a vast, mineral-rich forest expanse spanning north-west Nigeria and Niger. Towns and villages in close proximity to the forests have been subjected to mass killings, attacks, sexual violence and extortion. The number of kidnappings for ransom have surged in recent years.

According to Amnesty International, 1,126 people were killed by bandits in Nigeria between January and June this year.

One local in Kankara, speaking on condition of anonymity, said bandits were known in the area and “operate freely”, with scarce resistance from security forces.

Dr Murtala Rufa’i, a security analyst, said that the activity of jihadist groups like Boko Haram in the region was increasing, yet despite Boko Haram’s claim, the full extent of its involvement in this particular kidnapping remained unclear.

“The link between Boko Haram and some of these groups is there and the connection is strong, but there are a lot of factors that complicate these links,” he said. “Boko Haram is ideological, with a clear hierarchy and mission, yet the banditry is primarily a local phenomenon, designed and orchestrated by local bandits that are fully known in the region and by state authorities.”

Additional reporting by Abba Mohammed