Negotiations are underway in Nigeria to obtain the release of 317 teenage girls kidnapped on Friday from their boarding school located in Zamfara state, in the north-west of the country, we learned from sources close to these discussions.
This is the fourth attack on schools in less than three months in this region of Nigeria, where criminal groups, called “bandits”, have increased large-scale cattle thefts and have practiced kidnapping for ransom for more than ten years. years.
Zamfara government officials are in contact with the kidnappers to negotiate the release of hostages from a school for girls in Jangebe since the kidnapping.
“Discussions are taking place with the bandits who detain the girls and we hope for an early outcome,” an official of the local authorities involved in the negotiations told AFP, who preferred to remain anonymous.
“It is a sensitive situation that requires patience and tact, when the lives of hundreds of young girls are at stake,” he added.
“The negotiations are advancing. Once the obstacles are overcome, the girls will be released, ”said a second source.
Zamfara authorities are used to discussing amnesty agreements with the criminal groups with whom they have been negotiating for over a year in exchange for handing over their weapons.
It was Zamfara state officials who negotiated the release last December of 344 boys who had been kidnapped by bandits from their boarding school in neighboring Katsina state.
With each release, the authorities deny paying any ransom to the kidnappers, but this is however little doubt for the security experts who fear that this will lead to an increase in kidnappings in these regions plagued by extreme poverty and little or no at all secure.
On Friday evening, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari assured that he would not “give in to blackmail” from “bandits” who are awaiting “the payment of large ransoms”.
This new mass kidnapping rekindled memories of Chibok’s kidnapping in 2014, when the jihadist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 female students, sparking worldwide emotion.
More than a hundred of them are still missing and no one knows how many are still alive.
But these two kidnappings are to be distinguished: the “bandits” act above all for the lure of profit, and not for ideological reasons, even if some have forged links with jihadist groups in the northeast.