Free 42 people kidnapped in Nigeria for 10 days | the Chronicle

The 42 people, 27 of them children, who had been abducted ten days ago in a Kagara High School, in central Nigeria, were released on Saturday, according to local authorities announced the next day another mass kidnapping of 317 girls in the north of the country.

“Students, teachers and their relatives at the Kagara Government College of Sciences have regained their freedom and are welcomed by the local government”, a d Sani Bello, Governor of the Nigerian state of Niger, a region plagued by criminal groups.

February 17 armed men attacked this public school Kagara High School, where they killed a student and kidnapped 27 students, three teachers and 12 family members of staff.

The dead student is Benjamin Domma, who was trying to escape, which a member of staff did, it was he who alerted the authorities to the fate of the hostages.

The total number of those released on Friday was confirmed by a resident of the Premium Times newspaper and then verified by a local government spokesperson with the Europa Press news agency.

Some released are very low due to lack of food But no life is in danger These groups generate terror in the local populations, from mass kidnappings against payment of a ransom, the pillaging of towns and the theft of cattle.

On Friday, another 317 teenage girls in Zamfara state, further north, were abducted from their rooms. Security forces, accompanied by angry villagers, launched a rescue operation.

President Muhammadu Buhari, questioned by the catastrophic situation regarding safety in the northern Nigeria, said last night that his administration no “will give in to blackmail” criminals.

Before each new mass kidnapping, the federal or local authorities assert that will not pay ransom for the release of hostages, something which is unlikely according to security experts that they fear that the type of crime is increasing in the region, quotes the AFP press agency.

These criminal groups operate primarily for profit and not for ideological reasons, although some are linked to jihadist groups in the northeast.

The criminal violence of these groups has killed more than 8,000 people since 2011, and forced some 200,000 people to flee their homes, according to an International Crisis Group (ICG) report published in May 2020.

There is no news, however, of the group of 317 teenagers kidnapped on Friday and which the Zamfara State Police and the army are looking for in a joint operation, after being taken from a girls’ boarding school in Jangebe.