Abducted Zamfara students regain freedom after 11 days

The students abducted from Government Day Secondary School, Kaya, Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State, have regained freedom.

The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) broke the news.

• PODCAST: Genital Infections: ‘Why Use of Herbal Concoctions Is Dangerous‘
• No more amnesty for bandits, Matawalle declares

“The seventy five students of Government Day Secondary School Kaya in Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State abducted about two weeks ago regain freedom,” NTA posted on Facebook.

The development comes after telecommunication networks were shut down in Zamfara as a means to tackle banditry.

Details of their release are yet to be known but the NTA posted two pictures of the freed students.

Gunmen invaded the school, abducting the students and a teacher.

But five of them escaped a day after. A father of one of the escaped students, all women, told the BBC Hausa that his daughter returned home around 1am the next day.

He said his daughter told him that their captors divided them into two groups, and in the process of dividing them, she and four others managed to escape.

The ongoing measures has yielded results as many of the captives have been set free from captivity.

Bandits have been finding it difficult to communicate with their informants or get things from some local markets.

Last week, Governor Bello Matawalle said the state government is no longer interested in holding a dialogue with bandits.

He said security forces would flush them out of the state.

“My administration will no longer grant amnesty to bandits as they have failed to embrace the peace initiative earlier extended to them,’’ the governor had said in his address to some residents.

He urged residents to be patient and to support new security measures put in place to flush out bandits and their collaborators to restore peace in the state.

The governor said the barrage of attacks on bandits by security forces had made them to make a fresh overture to government seeking dialogue.

He said the bandits’ emissaries informed him that they had repented and would want to dialogue with government.