The leader of the terrorist Boko Haram sect, Abubakar Shekau, has faulted several claims by the Nigerian government as well as the military and Katsina State government on the number of schoolboys kidnapped from the Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, on Friday, December 11, saying the number of students they abducted was 523.
Though the Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari said that 333 students were abducted by the bandits, a claim corroborated by the Nigerian Army, the Presidency, through Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, disagreed with the figure, insisting that it was 10 students that were kidnapped.
But in another voice message released by Shekau on Tuesday, December 15, the Boko Haram leader disclosed that they currently have 523 children in captivity.
Soon after the abduction took place, several reports in the media had estimated that about 600 students could not be accounted for after some who had fled into the surrounding forest on the night of the abduction gradually emerged in the morning.
On Sunday, December 12, Masari narrowed the figure down to 333 out of the total of 839 students in the school, and said the government was yet to be contacted by the group responsible for the abduction.
“Based on the available records we have, we are still searching for 333 students through either the forest or their parents to ascertain the actual number that have been kidnapped,” Masari had said when he received a Federal Government delegation from Abuja.
“We are still counting because more are coming out from the forest and we are calling through the numbers of those parents that have phone numbers to find out whether or not their children have gone back home.”
However, on the same day, Shehu claimed only 10 students were with the gunmen.
“Some of the children who fled into the bush said that 10 children were being held hostage by the gunmen,” he had told BBC Hausa in an interview.
But in the audio recording released by Shekau where he claimed responsibility for the abduction of the schoolboys, he said:
“The Nigerian government lied on the number of students we kidnapped from Kankara. They said 333 students are missing while another said we kidnapped only 10.
“Let me make it clear that we kidnapped 523 students. We will continue in this work as ordained by Allah because the government is placing Western education above the teachings of Islam.”
