All abducted Nigerian schoolgirls freed, state governor says

Gunmen have freed all 279 girls kidnapped from a boarding school in northwest Nigeria, officials said on Tuesday, as victims told Reuters how their abductors had beaten and threatened to shoot them.

According to earlier reports, 317 girls from the Government Girls Science Secondary (GGSS) School in the town of Jangebe in Zamfara state were abducted by an armed gang at around 1 a.m. on Friday.

Zamfara government spokesman Sulaiman Tanau Anka said some of the missing girls had run into the bush at the time of the assault, and the number of those kidnapped was 279.

All had been freed, Zamfara Governor Bello Matawalle said.

The Zamfara raid was the second such abduction in little over a week in the northwest, a region increasingly targeted by gangs.

Governor Matawalle said “repentant bandits” working with the government under an amnesty programme had helped secure the Jangebe girls’ release.

“Those repentant ones are working for us, and they are working for the government and they are working for security,” he said.