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More than 130 schoolchildren who were kidnapped in northern Nigeria have been freed, according to government officials, giving Africa’s most populous country a temporary reprieve from its growing security crisis.
Uba Sani, governor of the north-western state of Kaduna where the abduction took place a fortnight ago, said the students from the town of Kuriga had been released, praising President Bola Tinubu, Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s national security adviser and the military for their efforts.
The Nigerian military said on Sunday that it rescued 137 hostages from neighbouring Zamfara state, but its statement did not explain the discrepancy with the 287 students who were reported missing earlier this month. Analysts said the school could have been unsure of how many children were taken or whether others remained with their captors.
“The military working with local authorities and government agencies across the country, in a co-ordinated search and rescue operation rescued the hostages,” it said.
Kidnapping has become one of the biggest security challenges in Nigeria as Islamist insurgents and armed gangs known as bandits snatch people for ransom across much of the country’s vast northern regions.
The release came just days before the deadline to pay the N1bn ($680,000) ransom demanded by the kidnappers. Seventeen students from Sokoto who were also abducted in early March were freed over the weekend, according to officials in the north-western state.
Mass kidnappings of vulnerable school children have increased since Islamist terror group Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok in north-eastern Borno state in 2014. Almost 100 of them remain in captivity with the group, according to Amnesty International.
Militants typically snatch people and hide in dense forests. Although parliament criminalised the payment of ransoms to kidnappers two years ago, families often have to organise crowdfunding campaigns to pay sums to criminal groups who now rake in millions of dollars every year.
Information minister Mohammed Idris said at the time of the abduction from Kuriga that Tinubu had directed security forces to bring back the children without “paying anybody any dime”.
The Kuriga kidnapping was the first mass abduction that Tinubu has had to deal with since his inauguration last May, and the successful operation will be seen as a relief for his administration.
Almost 4,000 people were seized in Nigeria in 2023, the highest level in five years, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. But experts said the number was likely to be an underestimate as many incidents go unreported to the authorities.
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