When a Nation s Soul is Kidnapped thisdaylive.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thisdaylive.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
TODAY
December 18, 2020
Dozens of kidnapped school boys arrived back home on Friday a day after security forces rescued them in northwest Nigeria.
Television pictures showed the boys, many of them wearing light green uniforms and clutching blankets, arriving on buses, looking weary but otherwise well.
Gunmen raided the boys’ secondary school in Kankara town, Katsina state, on Friday last week and marched around 350 of them into the vast Rugu forest. It was not clear if all of them had been recovered in the rescue operation.
None of the boys spoke as they walked from the bus in single file, flanked by soldiers, into a government building. A group of their parents waited to be reunited with them in another part of town.
Iyobosa Uwugiaren, Omololu Ogunmade, Kigsley Iweze and Udora Orizu in Abuja, Francis Sardauna in Katsina
President Muhammadu Buhari was upbeat yesterday when he met with the returnee Kankara boys at the Government House, Katsina, and reiterated his determination to provide security for all in Nigeria.
The schoolboys were abducted when gunmen stormed their school, Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, on December 11.
The president, who spoke in Hausa, was excted by the rescue of the schoolboys within six days and congratulated the children for their safe return.
He stressed that the government would continue to improve the nation’s security system.
Reuters
Published: 18 Dec 2020 08:19 PM BdST
Updated: 18 Dec 2020 08:19 PM BdST Rescued Nigerian school boys sit together at the Government house in Katsina, Nigeria, December 18, 2020. Reuters Freed Nigerian schoolboys walk after they were rescued by security forces in Katsina, Nigeria, December 18, 2020. Reuters
Scores of schoolboys who were rescued from kidnappers in northwest Nigeria arrived back home on Friday, many of them barefoot and wrapped in blankets after their week-long ordeal. );
}
The boys, dressed in dusty clothes, looked dazed and weary but otherwise well as they got off buses in the city of Katsina and walked to a government building.
One, who did not give his name, said the captors had beaten them with canes. He added that the kidnappers had described themselves as members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, although he suspected they were armed bandits.