BRINGING BACK OUR BOYS
Rescued, scores of Boko Haram kidnap victims
LOOKING dazed and weary, scores of schoolboys arrived back home yesterday after being rescued from kidnappers in Nigeria.
The boys, many of them barefoot and wrapped in blankets, looked otherwise well as they got off buses in the city of Katsina after their week-long ordeal.
But one, who did not give his name, said the captors had beaten them with canes.
The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility. The boy said the kidnappers had described themselves as Boko Haram members, but he suspected they were armed bandits.
‘They beat us every morning, every night,’ he said. ‘We suffered a lot. They only gave us food once a day and water twice a day. They said I should say they are Boko Haram and gangs of Abu Shekau [the name used by a Boko Haram leader]. Sincerely speaking, they are not Boko Haram. They are just small and tiny, tiny boys with big guns.’
Within hours – before many had met their waiting parents – they were whisked to a reception with President Muhammadu Buhari, who had come under mounting pressure to free them. Gunmen on motorbikes had raided the boys’ boarding school in the town of Kankara in Katsina state, north-west Nigeria, and taken them to the Rugu forest.
Officials said security services rescued them on Thursday, but many details of the i ncident remain unclear, including who was responsible, whether ransom was paid, and whether all of the boys are now safe.
Some said around 350 had been rescued but more may still be held captive. The abduction gripped a country already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the north-eastern town of Chibok.
That came to worldwide attention after Nigerian activists started a campaign called Bring Back Our Girls, which saw celebrities and thenUS first lady Michelle Obama pose with the slogan. Six years on, only about half the girls have been found.