Militants who kidnapped 286 children and staff from a school in northern Nigeria last week are demanding a total of 1 billion naira ($620,432) for their release, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing a spokesman for the families of the hostages and a local councilor.
Jubril Aminu said he had received a call from the kidnappers on Tuesday, and they gave a 20-day ultimatum for the payment to be made in full.
“They said they will kill all the students and the staff if the ransom demand is not met,” he told Reuters.
The students were abducted from their school on March 7, reportedly by gunmen on motorcycles, in the remote town of Kuriga, Kaduna State, in the northwest of the African nation, which is plagued with Jihadist insurgents and armed groups.
At least 100 children aged 12 or younger were among the abductees, authorities have said.
The Kaduna incident is one of the largest mass kidnappings in recent years, following the renowned 2014 kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in Borno State’s Chibok village by Boko Haram extremists.
On Saturday, just two days after the March 7 abductions, armed men broke into an Islamic boarding school in Gidan Bakuso, a village in Sokoto state, and seized at least 15 students in a dawn raid. A few days earlier, 200 people, mostly women and children displaced by conflict, were reportedly kidnapped in Borno, bringing the total number of similar incidents in the northern region last week to three.
The West African nation’s President Bola Tinubu has vowed to ensure the abductees are rescued and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Nigerian Information Minister Mohammed Idris said in a statement on Wednesday that Tinubu has ordered security forces to secure the hostages’ release but warned against paying a ransom.
“Everything is being done to degrade these criminals, and we are confident in the resolve and capacity of our security forces to triumph. The president was also emphatic that no ransom will be paid,” Idris wrote on X (formerly Twitter).