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Reuters

Dozens of schoolboys who were rescued from kidnappers in northwest Nigeria arrived back home on Friday, many of them barefoot and clutching blankets.
Television pictures showed the boys dressed in dusty clothes, looking weary but otherwise well, getting off buses in the city of Katsina and walking to a government building.
One of them, with flecks of dried mud on his face, told Channels TV the captors had fed them bread and cassava.
“It was cold,” he told the reporter. Asked how he had felt when the bus arrived in Katsina, he said: “I was really happy,” and broke into a smile.
“We are very grateful. We are very grateful. We are very grateful,” a man who said he was the father of two of the boys told the Arise television station.

A week earlier, gunmen on motorbikes raided the boys’ boarding school in the nearby town of Kankara and marched around 350 of them into the vast Rugu forest. Authorities said security services rescued them on Thursday, although it was not clear if all of them had been recovered.
The abduction gripped a country already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Islamist militant group Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.
Six years on, only about half the girls have been found or freed. Others were married off to fighters, while some are assumed to be dead.
Hours before the rescue of the boys was announced, a video started circulating online purportedly showing Boko Haram militants with some of the boys. Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the footage or who released it.
22,000 missing in Nigeria because of Boko Haram, Red Cross says
On Friday, the boys from the Government Science Secondary School walked from the buses in single file, flanked by soldiers and armed police officers, and were taken to the government building to meet the governor.
They were then brought back and driven off for medical checks, officials said.
A group of their parents waited to be reunited with them in another part of town.
“I couldn’t believe what I heard until neighbours came to inform me that it’s true,” Hafsat Funtua, mother of 16-year-old Hamza Naziru, said earlier in a phone interview.
Describing the moment she heard the news, she said she ran out of her house with joy “not knowing where to go” before returning home to pray.

Last week’s mass kidnapping piled pressure on the government to deal with militants in the north of the country.
It was particularly embarrassing for President Muhammadu Buhari, who comes from Katsina state and has repeatedly said that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated”.
Buhari said he had congratulated the state’s governor and the army, in a brief clip from an interview posted on his Twitter account earlier on Friday.
Hundreds flee fearing Boko Haram after Chad army leaves Nigeria
Boko Haram has a history of turning captives into jihadist fighters. If it was involved, the abduction in northwestern Nigeria marks an expansion in its activities from its base in the northeast. But it could have bought the boys from local criminal gangs with which it has been building ties.
Armed gangs that rob and kidnap for ransom, widely referred to as “bandits”, carry out attacks on communities across the northwest, making it hard for locals to farm, travel or tap rich mineral assets in some states such as gold.


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Africa

Freed Nigerian schoolboys arrive back home a week after abduction

Boys are seen in an undisclosed location in a video allegedly released by Boko Haram on Thursday. Photo: Boko Haram via AP

Supporters of the "Coalition of Northern Groups" (CNG) rally to urge authorities to rescue hundreds of abducted schoolboys, in northwestern state of Katsina, Nigeria on December 17, 2020 - Boko Haram recruited three local gangs in northwest Nigeria to kidnap hundreds of schoolboys on its behalf, security and local sources said on December 16, 2020. The attack occurred hundreds of kilometres from Boko Haram's stronghold in northeast Nigeria, where it launched a brutal insurgency a decade ago. (Photo by Kola SULAIMON / AFP)

TOPSHOT - A parent waits outside the Government Science Secondary school in Kankara, in northwestern Katsina State, Nigeria on December 16, 2020. - Boko Haram on Tuesday claimed the abduction of hundreds of students, from Government Science Secondary school, looks on in Kankara, in northwestern Katsina State, Nigeria. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon / AFP)

Boko Haram claims kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian students

School bags and other items belonging to pupils at the Government Science school in Kankara are seen abandoned on the floor after the kidnapping. Photo: AFP

FILE PHOTO: The leader of one of the Boko Haram group's factions, Abubakar Shekau, holds a weapon in an unknown location in Nigeria in this still image taken from an undated video obtained on January 15, 2018. Boko Haram Handout/Sahara Reporters via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT./File Photo

A view shows the classroom blocks at the Government Science school where gunmen abducted students, in Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state, Nigeria December 15, 2020. - Boko Haram on Tuesday claimed the abduction of hundreds of students, marking its first attack in northwestern Nigeria since the jihadist uprising began more than ten years ago. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon / AFP)

A Kankara Town road sign is seen, after gunmen abducted students from the Government Science school, in Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state, Nigeria December 15, 2020. - Boko Haram on Tuesday claimed the abduction of hundreds of students, marking its first attack in northwestern Nigeria since the jihadist uprising began more than ten years ago. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon / AFP)

A view of an empty classroom at the Government Science school in Kankara from which students were abducted on Friday. Photo: AFP

Nigerian military in firefight with gang who kidnapped hundreds of secondary school pupils

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Photo: Nigeria Presidency / Reuters

Boko Haram massacre leaves 110 dead in northeast Nigeria, UN confirms

Men gather near dead bodies of people who were killed by militants. Photo: Reuters

Men carry the bodies of people killed by militant attack, during a mass burial in Zabarmari, in the Jere local government area of Borno State, in northeast Nigeria, November 29, 2020. REUTERS/Ahmed Kingimi NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

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Islamist militant group Boko Haram had claimed responsibility for the abductions in an unverified audio recording
Rescue operation was carried out without a single shot fired, with most but not all of the boys recovered



Rescue operation was carried out without a single shot fired, with most but not all of the abductees recovered.


Islamic militancy

Terrorism