Kidnappers have released all the girls abducted from a boarding school in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara on Friday, the state governor told Al Jazeera, as President Muhammadu Buhari expressed “overwhelming joy” over the news.
Bello Matawalle said on Tuesday the students were safe with authorities and that no ransom had been paid for their release.“Today, we have received the children who were under captivity since Friday. I initiated a peace accord which yielded a positive result. No ransom was paid to anyone. I insisted that we were not going to give anything to any of them,” Matawalle told Al Jazeera.
The governor said the students were being taken to a health facility for medical examination.
On Friday, police said 317 girls were abducted in the raid by more than 100 gunmen on the Government Girls Secondary School in remote Jangebe village.
However, Matawalle told Al Jazeera the total number of kidnapped students was 279.
Zamfara state spokesman Sulaiman Tanau Anka told Reuters news agency some of the missing girls had run into the bush at the time of the assault, confirming the number of those kidnapped was 279.
One the girls told reporters early Tuesday how the kidnapping took place.
“We were sleeping at night when suddenly we started hearing gun shots. They were shooting endlessly. We got out of our beds and people said we should run, that they are thieves,” She said.
“Everybody fled and there were just two of us left in the room. The other girl is from my town. I told her ‘get up!’ so we can run away, she said ‘I swear to God, I will not leave the bed’. At that stage they were pointing guns at our heads. I was really afraid of being shot,” She added.
‘Overwhelming joy’
Government officials had been in talks with the kidnappers – referred to as “bandits” – following Nigeria’s third school attack in less than three months.
Zamfara state police commissioner Abutu Yaro said a government-led peace process had resulted in the girls’ release.
“The Zamfara peace accord remains the backbone of the success we have recorded so far. These children were recovered through dialogue,” he told reporters, adding that more details of the incident and police response would be released later.
