Nigeria Won’t Pay a Dime to Kidnappers: Tinubu
Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has ordered security forces not to pay ransom for the release of close to 300 students and staff who were kidnapped from a school in north-western Kaduna state last week.
Mr Tinubu instead directed security agencies to ensure the release of all kidnapped victims without any payment to the kidnappers, the country’s Information Minister Mohammed Idris told reporters on Wednesday.
Mr Idris said the president had told forces searching for the pupils to make sure “not a dime is paid”.
Earlier, relatives of those taken said gunmen had demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars for the release of the students abducted from their school in Kuriga village.
ALSO READ: Nigerian Kidnappers Demand $620,000 For Release of School Hostages
There have been several mass kidnappings over the last week, including the seizure on Tuesday night of more than 60 people from a village also in Kaduna state.
Over the last three years hundreds of students have been abducted.
Some of the hostages have been released following negotiations with the authorities, although officials deny ransom payments are made.
A law passed in 2022 banned paying ransom to kidnappers.
The surge of large-scale abductions is challenging Mr Tinubu’s government, which had promised to tackle insecurity.
Twice in one week, gangs of motorcycle-riding armed men, operating from forests in two different places in the north of the country, kidnapped hundreds of people.
First on Wednesday we got news from a remote town in Borno state in the north-east that suspected militant Islamists had seized women and children from a displaced persons camp who were searching for firewood. It took several days for the news to emerge because the local mobile phone masts had been destroyed. BBC
