Nigeria: Kidnapped Child Soldiers Returned

Always remember: the quickest way to build a loyal army is to kidnap children.

I don’t know about you, but when I was 12, I would have found this way more exciting than being in school.

AP:

More than 300 schoolboys abducted last week by armed men in northwest Nigeria have been released, a government official said Thursday.

In an announcement on Nigerian state TV, NTA, Katsina State Gov. Aminu Bello Masari said the 344 boarding school students were turned over to security officials and were being brought to the state capital, where they will get physical examinations before being reunited with their families.

“I think we can say … we have recovered most of the boys, if not all of them,” Masari said. He did not disclose if the government paid any ransom.

President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed their release, calling it “a big relief to their families, the entire country and to the international community,” according to a statement from his office. Amid an outcry in the West African nation over insecurity in the north, Buhari noted his administration’s successful efforts to secure the release of previously abducted students. He added that the government “is acutely aware of its responsibility to protect the life and property of the Nigerians.”

“We have a lot of work to do, especially now that we have reopened the borders,” Buhari said, acknowledging that the Northwest region “presents a problem” the administration “is determined to deal with.”

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for last Friday’s abduction of the students from the all-boys Government Science Secondary School in the Katsina State village of Kankara. The jihadist group carried out the attack because it believes Western education is un-Islamic, factional leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video earlier this week. More than 800 students were in attendance at the time of the attack. Hundreds escaped, but it was believed that more than 330 were taken.

For more than 10 years, Boko Haram has engaged in a bloody campaign to introduce strict Islamic rule in Nigeria’s north. Thousands have been killed and more than 1 million have been displaced by the violence. The group has been mainly active in northeast Nigeria, but with the abductions from the school in Kankara, there is worry the insurgency is expanding to the northwest.

Note that they’re not dealing with coronavirus in Nigeria, because they are too busy dealing with actual problems that exist in real life to manage a fake crisis.

They couldn’t figure out if someone died of whichever thing.

They just think everyone dies of AIDS, even though it’s a hoax.

Nigeria deals with real problems.

We could learn something from these folks.