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Freed Nigerian schoolboys welcomed; calls for more security

A group of schoolboys are escorted by Nigerian military and officials following their release after they were kidnapped last week, Friday Dec. 18, 2020 in Katsina, Nigeria. More than 300 schoolboys kidnapped last week in an attack on their school in northwest Nigeria have arrived in the capital of Katsina state to celebrate their release. The boys were abducted one week ago from the all-boys Government Science Secondary School in Kankara in Katsina state village. Nigeria's Boko Haram jihadist rebels claimed responsibility for the abduction. saying they attacked the school because it believes Western education is un-Islamic, factional leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video earlier this week. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
A group of schoolboys are escorted by Nigerian military and officials following their release after they were kidnapped last week, Friday Dec. 18, 2020 in Katsina, Nigeria. More than 300 schoolboys kidnapped last week in an attack on their school in northwest Nigeria have arrived in the capital of Katsina state to celebrate their release. The boys were abducted one week ago from the all-boys Government Science Secondary School in Kankara in Katsina state village. Nigeria's Boko Haram jihadist rebels claimed responsibility for the abduction. saying they attacked the school because it believes Western education is un-Islamic, factional leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video earlier this week. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

By CARLEY PETESCH and LEKAN OYEKANMI / The Associated Press 7 min read

KATSINA, Nigeria (AP) – Bleary, barefoot, apparently numbed by a week of captivity, more than 300 Nigerian schoolboys, freed after being kidnapped in an attack on their school, were welcomed by the governor of Katsina state and Nigeria’s president on Friday.

Reunions with their parents began late in the day.

“Since this incident happened I have not been able to sleep, but now I can sleep,” said Salisu Kankara, a parent of one of the schoolboys who was released.

The relatively quick release of the more than 330 boys took place after a prompt response by the government, which appears to have learned from earlier mass school abductions, especially of the Chibok schoolgirls, that did not have such a happy result.

The students’ nightmare began on the night of Dec. 11 when they were seized by men armed with AK-47 rifles from the all-boys Government Science Secondary School in Kankara village in Katsina state in northwestern Nigeria. They were marched through a forest and forced to lie in the dirt amid gun battles between their captors and the troops pursuing them.