Twelve young women and girls who were abducted in Borno state on November 22 were freed late Saturday, local officials and the military said.
Their release comes amid a recent spike in kidnappings of youths across Nigeria. “All 12 were released,” Abubakar Mazhinyi, president of the Askira-Uba council, told the AFP news agency.
The Nigerian Army said the rescued girls have been moved to a secure military facility where they are receiving medical care, psychological support and debriefing, and will be reunited with their families once those processes are complete.
The group had been taken last Saturday near farms close to an area known as a jihadist hideout. Thirteen women and girls, aged 16 to 23, were initially seized; one was released earlier after telling captors she was nursing a baby. The Army blamed the abduction on Boko Haram’s breakaway faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
Borno remains the epicenter of the long-running conflict with Islamist militants that began 16 years ago with Boko Haram. Though the insurgency has weakened, both Boko Haram and ISWAP continue to pose security threats in the region. The recent kidnappings are a stark reminder of the 2014 Chibok abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls.
Elsewhere in Nigeria, armed gangs in the central-western Niger Delta last week seized more than 300 children from a Catholic school; some escaped, but over 265 pupils and teachers remain in captivity. Those attacks were claimed by local criminal gangs rather than jihadist groups.
On Wednesday, President Bola Tinubu declared a security emergency, ordering large-scale recruitment for the police and military. He also authorized the Department of State Services to deploy trained forest guards and hire additional personnel to pursue armed groups hiding in forests. “There will be no more hiding places for agents of evil,” Tinubu said in a televised address.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse