By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
The Nigerian Police have confirmed that the local vigilantes rescued the 113 girls abducted by gunmen, while returning from religious activities in Katsina State at the weekend.
The state Police Spokesman, Gambo Isah, said that the girls, who were abducted in Mahuta village on Saturday, were rescued by the vigilante after a heavy gun battle with the kidnappers on Sunday.
The incident came barely 48 hours after the release of the 344 Kankara schoolboys Katsina, kidnapped from a boarding school by bandits and held for six days.
But local people, had told AFP that the number of children rescued following Saturday’s attack came to 113.
On their rescue
Sources said that when the news spread across Mahuta, residents and vigilantes mobilised and went after the kidnappers.
Leader of the local vigilante group, Abdullahi Sada, confirmed chasing after the criminals with his men.
He said that they set off in pursuit of the gunmen, who had been identified as ethnic Fulani herders.
His words: “We laid siege on the area we knew they were holding the children and also took some Fulani settlements in the area hostage, warning that if anything happened to our children no Fulani would live in the area henceforth.
“They released 60 children around 3:00am and this morning they called and said they had released the remaining 53 who are now being ferried from the bush.”
The children, from various Islamic seminaries in the town, had been travelling in the company of their teachers when they were kidnapped, said one of the teachers who gave his first name as Tijjani.
Recall that in April, armed bandits riding motorcycles killed 47 villagers when they raided Kasidau and nearby villages in Dandume district. In response, local people formed a local vigilante protection force to fight the bandits, which led to a series of tit-for-tat killings.
Northwest Nigeria has been terrorised by criminal gangs raiding villages, stealing cattle, kidnapping for ransom and burning homes after looting supplies.
The gangs also prey on travellers at bogus checkpoints on the highway, abducting them for ransom and killing them if they are not paid.
The bandits are known to hide in camps in Rugu forest which straddles Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara and Niger states in the region.
Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, is from Katsina State.
The earlier mass assault on schoolboys by armed men on a rural school in Kankara was initially blamed on criminal gangs, who have terrorised the region for years.
But last Tuesday Boko Haram, the brutal jihadist group behind the abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, claimed responsibility.