By Son Sanni and Afolabi Sotunde
JANGEBE, Nigeria (Reuters) – Nigerian gunmen on Saturday released 27 teenage boys abducted from their school in the north-central state of Niger last week, while security forces continued to search for more than 300 schoolgirls living in a nearby state was abducted.
Schools have become targets for mass kidnappings for ransoms in northern Nigeria by armed groups.
On February 17, 27 students, three staff members and 12 members of their families were abducted by an armed gang that attacked Government Science Secondary School in Kagara District in the state of Nigeria, which overwhelmed security details. One boy died during the raid.
After their release, a Reuters witness was seen as boys walk through a dusty village with armed security. Some struggle to stand and ask for water. A government official said the boys were between 15 and 18 years old.
The release comes just a day after the raid on a school in the state of Zamfara where gunmen seized 317 girls. Police were chasing the girls on Saturday while parents waited in the school complex for news about their daughters.
One of them, Lawal Muhammed, was hopeful that his daughter would be released and said the kidnappers wanted a ransom that could be paid.
“This … is already at ransom, so I know and believe that when the government gets along with them, they will be able to release our daughters,” he told Reuters.
School abductions in Nigeria were first carried out by the Islamic State jihadist groups Boko Haram and the province of West Africa, but the tactic has now been adopted by other militants whose agenda is unclear.
In a statement late Friday, the presidency said President Muhammadu Buhari had urged state governments “to review their policies to reward bandits with money and vehicles, and warns that the policy could boomerang disastrously.”
The unrest became a political problem for Buhari, a retired general and former military ruler, who came under increasing criticism over high-profile attacks by gangs known locally as ‘bandits’.
Buhari replaces his longtime military chiefs this month amid worsening violence.
In December, gunmen raided a school in the northwestern state of Katsina and abducted nearly 350 boys, who were later rescued by security forces.
The highest kidnapping at the school was that of more than 270 schoolgirls who abducted Boko Haram from the city of Chibok in 2014. About 100 of them remain missing.
(Reporting by Son Sanni, Afolabi Sotunde, Maiduguri Newsroom and Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Edited by Alexander Smith and Mark Potter)