Nigeria’s top security chief on Monday told school authorities on Monday that the hundreds of children kidnapped from a Catholic boarding school would be home “soon”, a spokesman said.
Armed gangs seized more than 300 teachers and staff at St. Mary’s co-education school in north-central Nigeria on November 21, as the country battles a spate of mass abductions.
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“The children are fine and will be back soon,” national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu, was quoted as saying during a high-profile visit with school officials in the town of Kontagora, in Niger state.
“The children are where they are and will come back safely,” Ribadu was quoted as saying by Daniel Atori, spokesman for the bishop who heads the Catholic archdiocese that owns St. Mary’s school.
The security chief did not offer further details on their current location or the status of government efforts to free them.
Previous kidnappings have been resolved via military action but also through negotiations and — analysts say — suspected ransom payments.
Since Boko Haram jihadists kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok in an infamous raid more than a decade ago, Nigeria has struggled to contain mass kidnappings.
Often conducted by armed groups known as “bandits”, kidnapping in Nigeria has become a “structured, profit-seeking industry” generating millions of dollars, according to Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence.
A spate of abductions in recent weeks has forced the issue into the spotlight, with hundreds of people kidnapped in November.
The kidnappings also come as the United States has launched a diplomatic offensive against Nigeria for what it says is the mass killing of Christians — a framing rejected by the Nigerian government and independent conflict analysts.
The same week as the St. Mary’s attack, gunmen kidnapped 25 students — all Muslims — at the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in neighbouring Kebbi state.
Fifty students from St. Marys have since escaped their captors. The students from Kebbi were released through what the governor called “non-kinetic” efforts.
Ribadu made his comments while visiting school officials, travelling with a government delegation that included the minister of humanitarian affairs and the director general of the secret police force known as the Department of State Services.
AFP