Talks underway to release kidnapping victims from school in Nigeria

Nigeria is working to secure the release of more than 40 people abducted from a school, including sending an imam to a forest to meet the kidnappers, a local official told AFP on Friday.

Armed men in military uniforms raided the government scientific college in Kagara, Niger state, early Wednesday, killing one student and taking others away.

The kidnappers captured 42 people, including 27 school children, three teachers and other family members of school staff, officials said, in the country’s latest mass kidnapping.

Northwest and central Nigeria have seen an upsurge in attacks by heavily armed criminal gangs known locally as “bandits” who attack villages, killing and abducting residents after looting and burning houses.

“Talks are underway (with the kidnappers) and multiple strategies are in place,” Niger State Information Commissioner Muhammad Sani Idris said on Friday.

Local authorities allowed a Muslim cleric, Ahmad Gumi, to meet with gang members as part of their efforts to secure their release.

“Gumi went as a preacher because many of these bandits claim to be Muslim and he even brought them Islamic books,” Idris said.

“Some of them (bandits) are starting to reason and express remorse,” Idris said.

Nigeria. By (AFP)

No ransom demand has been made and none will be paid, he added.

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered security forces to release kidnappings victims and the military and police say they are hunting down the gang.

Niger state governor Abubakar Sani Bello met the cleric after speaking with the bandits.

“We want to bring them back by all means. We are doing our best,” Governor Bello told reporters.

“We’re doing whatever it takes. A lot has been done so I think we’re reaching the endgame.”

The latest mass kidnapping came two months after 300 students were abducted from a school in Kankara in neighboring Katsina, home state of Buhari, while the president was visiting the area.

The boys were released after negotiations with government officials, but the incident sparked outrage and memories of the jihadist kidnappings of Nigerian schoolgirls in Dapchi and Chibok that shocked the world.

The kidnappings are just one of the security challenges facing the Buhari government in Nigeria, where militants are waging a jihadist insurgency in the northeast and ethnic tensions simmering in parts of the south.