Escaped schoolboy narrates what transpired, reveals number of students abducted

A 17-year-old schoolboy abducted alongside hundreds of others by suspected bandits in Kankara Government Science Secondary School has told the story of what transpired that night.

He also disclosed that the abductors took 520 students from the school.

The 17-year-old, who managed to escape from the gunmen, told the BBC Hausa how he ran away from the bandits after he and other students were ferried into the bush.

The father of the boy, however, did not want his son’s name mentioned for obvious reasons.

“It was on Friday night around 9:30pm after we came back from our classes for night reading when we heard gunshots. Initially, we thought it was not in our school but later we began to see them coming towards us.

“We then began to run and crossed the school fences but they used torch lights on us saying that we should come back.

“We thought they were security personnels but later when they gathered us at one place, we realised they were gunmen.

“After they had gone to the bush with us, they asked one of us to count us and there were 520 pupils. Because it was in the night, I didn’t know where they were taking us to,” he said.

According to him, the armed men manhandled them as they spent almost the whole night walking in an unknown bush full of thorns, then asked them to sleep around 30 minutes to the next morning.

Recounting how he escaped, the boy said when the bandits told them to sit and rest a little before continuing their journey, he hid behind a tree and crawled to the main road and a nearby town after the gunmen had moved with the others.

“From then, I moved on, I couldn’t see anything again. I didn’t know where they took my colleagues to. They just moved inside the bush with them,” he said.