Nigerian Gunmen Demand $620,000 Ransom for Lives of 286 Students, Including More Than 100 Children

The gunmen who kidnapped 286 students and staff from a school in northwestern Nigeria threatened on Tuesday to kill the hostages unless a ransom of one billion Nigerian naira — roughly $620,000 — is paid within 20 days.

A swarm of gunmen attacked the elementary and secondary schools in the town of Kuriga on March 7, killing one person and abducting almost the entire student body and faculty from both institutions. At least 100 of the victims are less than 13 years old. 

It was the second and worst mass kidnapping of that week; a third followed two days later when 15 children were taken from a school in the town of Sokoto.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu sent a detachment of troops to rescue the Kuriga abductees, but they remain in captivity.

According to Jubril Aminu, a community leader acting as spokesperson for the families of victims, the kidnappers threatened to “kill all the students and the staff if the ransom demand is not met” during a phone call on Tuesday.

Sky News pointed out that one billion naira works out to more than $2,000 per hostage — more than the average annual income in Nigeria.

Nigerian Information Minister Mohammed Idris told reporters on Wednesday that President Tinubu has directed his security forces to ensure that “not a dime is paid” of the ransom. Instead, Tinubu ordered the recovery of all hostages without paying any money.

“I have received briefings from security chiefs on the two incidents, and I am confident the victims will be rescued. Nothing else is acceptable to me and the waiting family members of these abducted citizens. Justice will be decisively administered,” Tinubu himself said on Friday, referring to the child abductions in Kuriga and Sokoto.

Tinubu does not seem to have advanced a plan for how this could be done. Local officials were reportedly unable to even trace the phone call that made the ransom demand.

One of the abducted students, a 17-year-old speaking under the pseudonym “Musa Garba,” told the BBC on Tuesday he was able to escape by crawling through tall grass “like a snake” while gunmen herded hundreds of other students away from the school.

“While we were moving in the bush, at some points, we were all thirsty, but there was no water. Some girls and boys were just falling as we moved because they were all tired. The bandits had to carry some of them on the bike,” he said, referring to the motorcycles the kidnappers used.

Former Nigerian state senator Shehu Sani told the BBC that jihadi groups carry out some of the abductions hoping to intimidate parents out of sending their children to school while collecting a little ransom money to finance their activities. “Boko Haram” is translated as “Western education is a sin,” a motto that expresses the opposition of the jihadis to all teachings except Islam.

Sani said bandit gangs imitating Boko Haram’s tactics may have perpetrated the more recent mass kidnappings.

“They are motivated by money. They simply kidnap people, and once ransom is paid to them, they release their hostages. They have no political agenda and no clear-cut leadership,” he said.

No one seems to have an idea of who the kidnappers are, although the Associated Press speculated they might be cash-hungry jihadi insurgents since ISIS-aligned terrorists have been associated with previous mass kidnappings. 

Boko Haram, a terrorist gang affiliated with the Islamic State, is believed responsible for the mass abduction of women from a refugee camp in March. Some Nigerian officials and outside observers think the refugee camp case might not have been a kidnapping but rather female refugees choosing to flee the grim refugee camp to live with their Boko Haram husbands in the bush, concocting the kidnap story as a cover for their departure.