Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015: Boko Haram technically defeated.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on December 1, 2020: War against Boko Haram far from over.
Boko Haram, the radical Islamic group that has been terrorizing Nigeria for years, claimed their militants kidnapped hundreds of schoolboys in the northwestern state of Katsina.
Boko Haram became a household name when they kidnapped over 300 girls in 2014 in Chibok. A lot of those girls remain missing.
Officials blamed bandits for the attack and kidnapping of over 300 schoolboys at the Government Science Secondary School in the town of Kankara in Katsina state.
But then Boko Haram released a statement. From Reuters UK:
In an audio message which reached Reuters via a WhatsApp message, a man purporting to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said: “We are behind what happened in Katsina.”“What happened in Katsina was done to promote Islam and discourage un-Islamic practices as Western education is not the type of education permitted by Allah and his holy prophet,” he said.No video footage was released of the missing boys.The man offered no proof for his statement. Reuters was unable to verify the audio and Nigerian authorities did not immediately comment.A security source told Reuters Boko Haram was not itself involved in the abduction, but that the kidnappers could have sold the boys to the Islamist group.
The attack happened last Friday at 11 PM GMT. People around the school “heard gunfire” and it “lasted for more than an hour.”
Some security personnel fought back and “repel some of the attackers before police reinforcements arrived.”
The school had over 800 students at the time of the attack. The attackers took 600 boys and some managed to escape. Over 300 remain missing:
“We were inside the hostel when we heard gunshots. I overheard someone saying that the security man has been killed. As we went out, lights were flashed at us, as they approached us, we started hearing gunshots,” Abukakar Umar, a senior student at GSSS, told CLIQQ TV, recounting what happened as his school came under siege. “When it happened, we ran to the bush because bullets were shot directly at us. Until we found a safe place where we slept.”“To be honest, I don’t have the intention of going back, because we have suffered,” Umar added, explaining that he did not plan to return to the school given the security risk.—“When we heard the news, we were confused totally. We were told they entered the school shooting, going hostel by hostel abducting students,” Yahaya Kankar, the father of two children abducted, told CLIQQ TV. “There was no mercy. It was terrible. They just came and picked our children like donkeys, like animals. We have never imagined something like this, to have bandits entering our school.”
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