Alghadeer TV Alghadeer TV
Dozens of students who were kidnapped from a school in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara earlier this month have been reportedly released after the army began a military crackdown on criminal gangs in the area.
An unnamed spokesman for Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle told Reuters on Monday that no ransom had been paid for the 75 schoolchildren who were abducted by unknown gunmen from the Government Day Secondary School in the remote village of Kaya, in the Maradun region of Zamfara State on September 1.
The release of the students on Sunday took place after their abductors came under pressure from a military crackdown and local authorities shut down telecoms in the region to disrupt communications between armed groups, the spokesman added.
According to security sources, their captors had released them in exchange for safe passage out of the forest as the army had surrounded their camp.
A video showed images of boys and girls in uniform, seated inside what looked like a meeting room.
“They looked robust and unharmed,” the spokesperson said.
A video released by Matawalle’s office also showed him greeting buses full of students in the night and asking them if they had been harmed.
Zamfara is among the four states in northwestern Nigeria that have taken measures to try to curb the security crisis in areas where there is not enough police presence.
Gunmen, locally known as “bandits,” have kidnapped more than 1,000 students in more than a dozen attacks on schools or colleges across northwest Nigeria since December 2020. The heavily-armed criminal gangs have demanded large ransom payments from parents. Some of the captives have been released after negotiations with local officials and some others have died or been killed in captivity.
