Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State stated that the allegation of ransom payment to free the abducted Kuriga students is not important.
In an interview with ChannelsTV on Sunday night, he emphasized that the most crucial thing is that the government successfully rescued all the students unharmed.
The schoolchildren were kidnapped from LEA Primary School and Government Secondary School in Kuriga about four weeks ago. However, the Defence Headquarters announced on Saturday that they had been rescued.
Despite rumors, especially on social media, suggesting that the government paid ransom to the kidnappers, Governor Sani denied these claims.
“What is more important today is that our children are back home. Most of those permutations are not necessary. If your child is kidnapped, will you be sitting down and talking about how he was released?
“For me, what is more important is that those children are back home. Their parents are extremely happy and what is important to them is to reunite with their children.
“But some people who have no business with the situation are the ones coming out with some irresponsible permutations about whether ransom is being paid, whether someone had gone into the kinetic or non-kinetic approach. What is important to us in Kaduna is that the children are back home.”
The governor said that the administration handled the Kuriga schoolchildren’s kidnapping extremely carefully, adding: “We tried as much as possible not to jeopardise the lives of the innocent children. Some people at some point wanted to politicize the whole incident.”
He clarified that 137 schoolchildren, not 287 as previously reported, were kidnapped on March 7, 2024, from Kuriga in the Chikun Local Government Area of the state.
