Sawt Falasteen - Last of kidnapped Nigerian pupils handed over, government says

Kidnappings for ransom are a common way for armed groups to make quick cash in the conflict-hit west African nation of some 230 million, but a spate of attacks in November put an uncomfortable international spotlight on Nigeria's grim security situation.

Six vans of children were escorted by security forces in armoured vehicles to the Niger State Government House, an AFP reporter in the state capital Minna saw Monday.

Authorities said the children, along with seven teachers and support staff, were the last batch of those taken by gunmen in the late November mass abduction at the St. Mary's co-educational boarding school in north-central Nigeria.

"Thank God for the mercy he has shown us, because if you look at these children and imagine the torment they went through, it is unbearable," Niger state Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago said at the reception ceremony.

The children were between four and 10 years old, one of the teachers told AFP at the scene.

Scores of children, including young boys sporting brightly-coloured football jerseys and others wearing traditional Nigerian clothes, posed for photos at the state government office where they were handed over by security forces.

The attack on St. Mary's -- reminiscent of the infamous 2014 kidnapping of schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Chibok -- was part of a series of mass abductions that rocked the west African country last month.

Nigeria suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns, from jihadists in the northeast to armed "bandit" gangs in the northwest.

It has not been publicly disclosed who abducted the children and teachers from St. Mary's, or how the government secured their release.

Analysts have said that based on past rescues, it is likely the government paid a ransom, which is technically prohibited by law.

- Questions over security -

The exact number taken from St Mary's has been unclear throughout the ordeal.

Initially, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said 315 students and staff were unaccounted for after the attack in the rural hamlet of Papiri.

Around 50 of them escaped immediately afterwards, and on December 7 the government secured the release of around 100.

That would leave about 165 thought to be still in captivity before Sunday's announcement that 130 were rescued.

But a UN source told AFP over the weekend that all those taken appeared to have been released -- as dozens thought to have been kidnapped had in fact managed to run off during the attack, and make their way home.

"We'll have to still do final verification," Daniel Atori, a spokesman for CAN in Niger state, told AFP on Sunday.

Speaking to reporters in the capital Abuja on Monday, Nigeria's information minister, Mohammed Idris, was pressed on why so many Nigerian schools remain easy targets for gunmen despite millions of dollars allocated for school security in the past decade.

"We should be optimistic," he said, adding that "there is so much that government is doing to see that that has abated," he said.

One of the first mass kidnappings that drew international attention was in 2014, when nearly 300 girls were snatched from their boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok by Boko Haram jihadists.

A decade later, Nigeria's kidnap-for-ransom crisis has "consolidated into a structured, profit-seeking industry" that raised some $1.66 million between July 2024 and June 2025, according to a recent report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy.

H.Darwish--SF-PST