Zamfara schoolgirls recount tortuous ordeal with bandits

 

BY OUR EDITOR

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A total of 279 schoolgirls abducted by armed bandits from their hostels in Government Girls Science Secondary School, Jangebe, Zamfara State, northwest Nigeria, were released on Tuesday, as victims described how their abductors had beaten and threatened to shoot them.

The girls were abducted just after midnight on Friday. All had now been freed, Zamfara Governor Bello Matawalle said.

Umma Abubakar, among those released, recounted their five-day ordeal in the hands of their abductors, to Reuters.

“Most of us got injured on our feet and we could not continue trekking, so they said they will shoot anybody who did not continue to walk,” she said.

Boarding schools in northern Nigeria have become targets for mass kidnappings for ransom by armed criminal gangs, a trend started by the jihadist group Boko Haram and continued by its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province.

Friday’s attack on the Government Girls Science Secondary School was the second such abduction in little over a week in the northwest, a region increasingly targeted by gangs.

READ: Why Buhari has failed to secure release of Leah Sharibu – Ezekwesili

Governor Matawalle said “repentant bandits” working with the government under an amnesty programme had helped secure release of the Jangebe schoolgirls.

“Those repentant ones are working for us, and they are working for the government and they are working for security,” he said.

Initial reports put the number kidnapped at 317, but Zamfara government spokesman Sulaiman Tanau Anka said the total was 279, as some of the girls had run into the bush at the time of the raid.

‘They hit us with guns’

Most of the girls appeared unharmed, but at least a dozen was sent to hospital.

Farida Lawali, 15, told how she and the other girls had been taken to a forest by the kidnappers.

“They carried the sick ones that cannot move. We were walking in the stones and thorns,” she said, sitting in the government house building, covered in a light blue veil.

“They started hitting us with guns so that we could move,” she added. “While they were beating them with guns, some of them were crying and moving at the same time.”

Buhari says release brings joy

President Muhammadu Buhari, who met his top security officials on Tuesday, said news of the girls’ release brought “overwhelming joy”.

He warned against paying ransoms to kidnappers, which the national government has denied doing.

“Ransom payments will continue to prosper kidnapping,” Buhari said, urging the police and the military to bring the kidnappers to justice.

Abduction, ploy to deny our daughters education – parent

One father, whose seven daughters were among those kidnapped and freed, said the incident would not deter him from schooling his children.

“It’s a ploy to deny our girls … from getting the Western education in which we are far behind,” Lawal Abdullahi told Reuters. “We should not succumb to blackmail. My advice to government is that they should take immediate precautions to stop further abductions.”

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF urged the Nigerian government to protect schools so children will not be fearful of going to school, and parents afraid of sending their children to school.

As recently as Saturday, gunmen released 27 teenage boys who had been kidnapped from their school on Feb. 17 in Niger state.

In 2014, Boko Haram abducted more than 270 schoolgirls from the north eastern town of Chibok, in Nigeria’s most high-profile school kidnapping. Around 100 remain missing.

Also, in 2018, 110 schoolgirls from Dapchi, Yobe State, north east Nigeria, were abducted from their school in daylight. All the girls but the only Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, were later released.

Sharibu remains in captivity to date on account of her faith. She was said to have turned down a proposal by her abductors to renounce Christianity and accept Islam, in order for her to be freed.

– With REUTERS report