several hundred school boys kidnapped in
northern nigeria last friday have
arrived in their state capital after
being freed
from the neighboring state where it's
thought they were held by gunmen in a
forest
the boys all 344 of them according to
the governor of katsina
will be visited by doctors before being
reunited with their families
boko haram said they carried out these
abductions but nigerian government
officials
are blaming criminal gangs possibly with
some connection
to the islamist militants haruna tangasa
from our bbc houses service
gave me this update earlier from the
nigerian capital abuja
information reaching us from kazana city
now is that
these boys have returned to government
house casino
where they were first brought by the
military are handed over to the governor
after they were taken to a particular
location in that city
whether they clean up themselves so they
are now wearing new look
they are wearing new clothes and they
are looking
neat now ahead of their meeting with
president mohamed buhari
president muhammadu buhari who is
currently on a visit to
kazuna state which is also his home
state
is going to address these students
and try to calm them down before they
are reunited with their
parent
and what is the government saying about
who
took the boys whether this was
ideologically motivated or
a criminal attack well the prevailing
opinion
on the government and security expert
here is that
these kids were taken by the armed
bandit who have been terrorizing
communities in those areas
even though boko haram uh militant group
has
claimed responsibility for the attack
but nobody seemed to believe them
even the the governor of zampala state
where they were
held and who mediated their release
insisted that these unbanded were behind
the abduction of these 344 school
children
well boko haram has become notorious
over the last decade for school
kidnappings
the group's name loosely translates as
western education is forbidden
so let's take a look now at the wider
picture in april 2014 boko haram
kidnapped 276 girls from their school in
chibok in
borno state and around 100 of those
girls are still missing
that abduction and others up to now have
taken place in
northeastern nigeria where baku haram is
based
but despite its claim now the nigerian
government says
the katsina abduction was carried out by
local gangs perhaps
connected to the islamist group armed
attacks and kidnappings are rife in
northwestern nigeria and often blamed on
bandits a loose term
for the gangs operating in the area
amnesty international says more than
1100 people
were killed by bandits in the first six
months of this year
with the government failing to bring the
attackers to justice
i've been talking to sherhusani a former
senator
for kaduna state in nigeria and a human
rights campaigner
who believes it was criminals rather
than boko haram acting as the main force
behind this kidnapping
he believes a ransom was paid to get the
boys released
in the last few years the bandits have
been kidnapping people
and collecting ransom and it is
technically impossible to have freed
those boys without
a ransom being paid but it may be
strategic
that the government don't want to
encourage kidnapping
and payment of ransom by publicly
disclaiming that ramsan was paid but it
is very much impossible
to have freed these boys from the hands
of these bandits without
an exchange and in your view these
aren't the tactics of boko haram
um as you are aware the boko haram have
the most active in the north
eastern part of nigeria and they are
populated by the kanori tribe
and the bandits in the northwestern part
of nigeria are mostly
the fulani tribe so i even with the
audio claim of boko haram i never
believe it is boko haram because it is
logistically impossible
for boko haram to operate in the
northeast and then not west
so um the fact that they were released
within 48 hours of their
kidnap shows that it was the bandits and
certainly if they were the boko haram
that kidnapped them
that could not have been the situation
because uh
the differences between the boko haram
and the bandit is that the boko haram
have a leadership they have a structure
and they have a religious theocratic and
political agenda
and the bandits are only motivated by
money ransom kidnapping
and this displacement of people so it is
the fact that they were kidnapped by
bandits and
there must have been behind the scenes
negotiation between the bandits and the
government
so the government has in a way a double
challenge there are different
motivations behind the kidnapping of
children
what more do you think the government
can do to keep children
safe well first of all what they have
done
for the meantime is the best to close
down the schools and then take
active majors in terms of protecting
students
but unfortunately the ideological
focus of the boko haram to that is their
campaign against western education
may have been a success with schools
been closed but it is necessary for now
after that then effort should be made to
secure schools
but for now it is unsafe to have
boarding school especially
in flash points and areas where the
bandies have been laying siege
in about five states in the northwest
kasina
sokoto kaduna zamfara and parts of niger
state which is neighboring to the
capital city
so the government now need to protect
the schools protect the students
provide infrastructure for such a
protection before students
should be allowed to return back to
their schools
former senator sunny