Kaduna State
Governor: Kidnapped schoolchildren freed in Nigeria
Nigerian soldiers patrol LEA Primary and Secondary School Kuriga where the students were abducted. photo
© Sunday Alamba/AP/dpa
Hundreds of schoolchildren were held captive by armed kidnappers for more than two weeks. Now the regional government is announcing some relieving news. But the situation remains dangerous.
Dozens of schoolchildren kidnapped in Nigeria have been released, according to the army and regional government authorities. Gunmen captured 287 girls and boys from a school in the northwestern state more than two weeks ago Kaduna kidnapped. According to a military spokesman, security forces freed 137 hostages early in the morning. It is still unclear why the number of freed children and the number of abductees stated by the school differed.
“I would like to announce that our Kuriga school children have been released,” Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani said on Sunday. They are unhurt. The release was the result of “operations by the security authorities”. Sani thanked the President and the Nigerian Army. He did not provide any further information, including the number of students exempted.
“The hostages are the same people who were abducted from the school in Kuriga, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State,” Nigerian military spokesman Major General Edward Buba said. The 76 female and 61 male hostages were rescued in neighboring Zamfara state and handed over to the authorities in Kaduna.
Heavily armed men surrounded school buildings
An armed group attacked a primary and secondary school in the town of Kuriga on March 7th. According to a teacher who spoke on local television, the building was surrounded by heavily armed men shortly before school started at 8 a.m. local time. The perpetrators forced the approximately 700 students and teachers to go into a forest area. However, many children and adults were able to escape.
In the north and center of Africa’s most populous country with more than 220 million inhabitants, both criminal gangs and Islamist terrorist groups repeatedly kidnap people. Almost exactly ten years ago, in April 2014, the abduction of 276 schoolgirls by the Islamist militia Boko Haram in Chibok in the northeastern state of Borno caused worldwide horror. Dozens of them remain missing.
What are the kidnappings about?
For Boko Haram and other jihadist groups, the kidnappings are mostly about making political demands or forcing girls and young women into forced marriages or abusing them as sex or domestic slaves. The gangs, on the other hand, primarily want to extort ransom money. According to economic and security consulting firm SB Morgen, Nigeria’s economic crisis has made ransom payments the main reason for kidnappings. According to SB Morgen, 3,620 people were kidnapped in 582 kidnapping incidents in Nigeria in the twelve months between July 2022 and June 2023 alone, the vast majority of them in Kaduna.
The region in which the school is located is considered a crime hotspot. In recent months, small groups of people, especially women and children, have repeatedly been kidnapped in the state. According to a member of parliament, more than 160 people were abducted in the neighboring administrative district within two weeks.