The Nigerian military on Sunday rescued college students and workers who have been kidnapped by gunmen from a college within the nation’s north earlier this month, the army mentioned, days earlier than a deadline to pay a $927,000 Cdn ransom.
The kidnapping of 287 college students on March 7 in Kuriga, a distant city within the northwestern state of Kaduna, was the primary mass abduction in Africa’s most populous nation since 2021 when greater than 150 college students have been taken from a highschool in Kaduna.
Army spokesperson Maj. Gen. Edward Buba mentioned 137 hostages — 76 females and 61 males — have been rescued within the early hours of Sunday in neighbouring state of Zamfara.
“Within the early hours of 24 March 2024, the army working with native authorities and authorities businesses throughout the nation in a coordinated search and rescue operation rescued the hostages,” Buba mentioned in a press release.
A safety supply mentioned earlier the scholars had been freed in a forest and have been being escorted to Kaduna’s capital for medical assessments earlier than being reunited with their households.
It was not instantly identified whether or not safety forces needed to extract the hostages from the arms of their captors or whether or not there had been any conflict within the course of.
Extra legal gangs demanding ransom
An earlier assertion from the federal government recommended that each one the scholars have been freed. Officers weren’t instantly accessible to touch upon the discrepancy in reported numbers.
Abductions at Nigerian faculties have been first carried out by jihadist group Boko Haram, which seized 276 college students from a ladies’ college in Chibok in northeastern Borno State a decade in the past. A few of the ladies have by no means been launched.
Since then the tactic has been broadly adopted by legal gangs with out ideological affiliation.
Final week, the gunmen demanded one billion naira ($927,000 Cdn) for the discharge of the lacking youngsters and workers. The federal government had mentioned it will not pay a ransom. The observe was outlawed in 2022.
However kidnappings by legal gangs demanding ransoms have turn out to be an nearly day by day incidence, particularly in northern Nigeria, tearing aside households and communities that should pool financial savings to pay ransoms, usually forcing them to promote land, cattle and grain to safe the discharge of their family members.