Tue 02 March 2021:
Kidnappers in Nigeria have released all the girls abducted from a boarding school in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara on Friday, the state governor Bello Matawalle said on Tuesday the students were safe with authorities and 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.
Government officials had been in talks with the kidnappers – known 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.
President Muhammadu Buhari said he felt “overwhelming joy” over the news that the kidnappers had released schoolgirls unharmed.
In a Tweet, Buhari said he was “pleased that their ordeal has come to a happy end without any incident”.
Heavily armed criminal gangs in northwest and central Nigeria have stepped up attacks in recent years, kidnapping for ransom, raping and pillaging.
The gangs are largely driven by financial motives and have no known ideological leanings.
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