Schoolboy recounts daring escape from Nigerian kidnap gang

Musa Garba, 17, had to slither on the ground like a snake to avoid being detected by his kidnappers. The teenager had managed to hide in a heap of cut grass as the group of schoolchildren he was abducted with were taking a break. More than 280 of them were snatched last week from a school in the town of Kuriga, in Kaduna state. Armed men on motorbikes - referred to locally as bandits - had been menacing the community.

Kuriga had been persistently attacked by gangs seeking to kidnap people and make money from ransom payments. The scale of this latest abduction and the fact that it involved children as young as seven has been overwhelming. Musa kept looking for ways to escape and tried to encourage others to join him. He saw his chance as the sun was setting.

Looking around to ensure he was not being monitored, he hid in one of the heaps of grass. Once it was totally dark, he got up and walked off until he got to a village. 10-year-old Sadiq Usman Abdullahi was last seen by his family on Thursday. When he appeared the next day in Kuriga, his parents were jubilant, but he came with harrowing tales of the children still in captivity.

His mother says she has not been able to sleep since that day. In the last decade and a half, people in northern Nigeria have come under intense attack by armed militant groups. At first, this mainly happened in the north-eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. A second force, linked to the Islamic State group, has also emerged.

There has been an escalation in attacks on schools in northern Nigeria. Primary schools, secondary schools and universities have come under attack. Shehu Sani, a former senator for Kaduna state, says the aim is to discourage parents from sending their children to school. The notorious attack on the girls’ school in Chibok 10 years ago set a template.

The government has invested a lot of time and money in tackling the issue, but there are still communities that feel unprotected. Jibril Gwadabe, a local traditional chief, says that the place is plagued by the bandits, due to the absence of security forces in the area. Chief Gwadabe: “We don’t know how they are, where they are” Nigeria has been plagued by mass abductions for years. The country’s economy is in such a mess, says former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

We need to get out of this mess," he says.

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