A joyous release of abducted school girls in Northern Nigeria
Days ago, students from a school in Northern Nigeria had been on local and international media after their abductions from their boarding school.
The news was met with outrage and many were left worried and fearing for the girls’ safety and their lives.
But the hundreds of girls abducted last week from the boarding school in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara state have now been released.
The girls, dressed in light blue hijabs and barefoot, were taken to the state’s Government House office in Gusau.
They appeared calm and ranged in ages from 10 and upwards.
Gunmen abducted the girls from the Government Girls Junior Secondary School in Jangebe town on Friday.
One of the released girls spoke about how the gunmen appeared in the middle of the night.
“Suddenly we started hearing gun shots. They were shooting endlessly,” the unnamed schoolgirl said.
She explained how everybody fled her dormitory until just she was left with another girl from her hometown.
The girl said the gunmen were pointing their weapons at them and asked them to show them where the staff quarters and the principal were.
“We said we don’t know who she is. They said the principal is our father and they will teach us a lesson,” she continued.
According to the governor of Zamfara state, 279 girls were freed.
The government last week said 317 had been kidnapped.
The terms of the students’ release were not made immediately clear. But this time just as it was in December when more than 300 boys were kidnapped from a school in Kankara, – in President Buhari’s home state of Katsina, while he was visiting the region, – there is huge amount of relief for parents of the students.
