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An emissary who paid a ransom for the release of more than 100 Nigerian children abducted in May has himself been kidnapped, the head of their Islamic school said on Monday.
Northwest and central Nigeria is a hotbed of cattle thieves and kidnappers who attack villages, killing and kidnapping residents after looting and burning houses.
Gangs have recently stepped up attacks on schools, kidnapping students for ransom from parents.
On May 30, around 200 armed men on motorcycles, known locally as bandits, stormed the town of Tegina in central Niger state and kidnapped 136 students from an Islamic seminary.
Last month, 15 of the hostages escaped while their captors slept in a remote village in neighboring Zamfara state where they were being held.
On July 20, parents and school officials sent a 60-year-old man, Kassim Tegina, to hand over 30 million naira ($ 73,000) to the kidnappers, but the bandits seized him after recovering the money. .
“To our shock, the kidnappers took the money and seized the courier and refused to release the children,” Abubakar Alhassan, director of the Salihu Tanko Islamic school where the children were taken, told AFP. removed.
“They were angry because the ransom was too small. We don’t understand what they want because that’s the amount we agreed to after a series of telephone negotiations,” he said. he declares.
The kidnappers said “they were holding him with the children until we paid more money,” Alhassan said.
He said the bandits initially asked for 200 million naira ($ 487,000), but later reduced the amount to 30 million naira.
The ransom was reportedly collected by parents and through voluntary donations from affected individuals and groups.
“We can no longer collect ransoms,” Alhassan said. “We have resigned ourselves to fate.”
The state government has repeatedly vowed not to pay ransom to the kidnappers.
Around 1,000 schoolchildren and students have been abducted in Nigeria since December.
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