Gusau, Nigeria:
All 279 Nigerian students kidnapped from their boarding college in the northern state of Zamfara have been released and are on government premises, the governor of the state told AFP Tuesday.
“I am happy to announce that the girls are free,” Dr. Bello Matawalle told an AFP journalist. “They have just arrived in the government house and are in good health.”
An AFP reporter saw hundreds of girls wearing hijabs, gathered at the government premises.
Authorities initially mentioned 317 girls have been abducted in the raid by hundreds of gunmen on the Government Girls Secondary School in remote Jangebe village on Friday.
But Matawalle mentioned the “total number of female students abducted” was 279.
“We thank Allah they are all now with us.”
Government officials had been in talks with the kidnappers — identified as bandits — following Nigeria’s third college attack in significantly less than 3 months.
A supply mentioned “repentant bandits” had been contacted to attain out to their former comrades as element of efforts to no cost the students.
Heavily-armed criminal gangs in northwest and central Nigeria have stepped up attacks in current years, kidnapping for ransom, raping and pillaging.
The Nigerian military deployed to the location in 2016 and a peace deal with bandits was signed in 2019 but attacks have continued.
In December, more than 300 boys have been kidnapped from a college in Kankara, in President Muhammadu Buhari’s household state of Katsina, even though he was going to the area.
The boys have been later released but the incident triggered outrage and memories of the kidnappings of 276 schoolgirls by jihadists in Chibok that shocked the planet.
Many of these girls are nevertheless missing.
The gangs are largely driven by economic motives and have no identified ideological leanings.
But there are issues they are getting infiltrated by armed Islamists. The jihadists’ decade-old conflict has killed more than 30,000 individuals and spread into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
Authorities have denied paying any ransom to safe the current releases, despite the fact that analysts say this is unlikely and safety professionals worry that this will lead to an enhance in kidnappings in these regions plagued by intense poverty.
Kidnapping for ransom in Africa’s most populous nation is currently a widespread national trouble, with businessmen, officials and ordinary citizens snatched from the streets by criminals hunting for ransom revenue.
At least $11 million was paid to kidnappers in between January 2016 and March 2020, according to SB Morgen, a Lagos-based geopolitical investigation consultancy.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)