Around 100 schoolchildren kidnapped from a Catholic school last month in one of Nigeria’s largest mass abductions were to reunite with their parents on Tuesday, a spokesman for the school owners said.

More than two weeks after their capture by armed gangs, the government in Abuja secured their release and handed them to the local government in Minna, the capital of the north-central Niger state on Monday.

On Tuesday they were taken on a day-long trip to their remote village in Papiri under security escort.

“This morning the children were escorted to Kontagora,” about three hours away from Papiri, a spokesman for the church association that owns the school, Daniel Atori told AFP.

“They will be taken to Papiri where they will be reunited with the families.”
The school attack came as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in Chibok.
In late November, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said 315 students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state.

Authorities have not announced any arrests or revealed how the children — aged mostly between 10 and 17 years — were released.

It is unclear how many are still held by the attackers.
As some 50 escaped immediately afterwards, around 165 are thought to remain in captivity following Monday’s release.

But a statement Monday from President Bola Tinubu put the figure at 115.
An official of an international charity expressed regret that the released children were quickly taken back to their village before receiving mental and psychological support.

“They wouldn’t even wait for the results of the laboratory tests conducted on the children to come out to determine which among them need urgent medical assistance,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

The state government had said on Monday that the children would undergo medical tests before reuniting with their parents.