By our reporter/ The bandits who abducted Bethel Baptist High School students says the remaining students still in captivity will be released in batches, the president of the Baptist conference, Ishaya Jangado said on Sunday.
A total of 121 students were abducted when bandits invaded the school on July 5 but the bandits had earlier released one of the students on health grounds, while twenty-eight students were dropped off on Saturday night at a location along Kaduna-Abuja road.
Vigilantes later took them to 1 Division, Nigerian army from where they were picked up by leaders of the Baptist Church led by Isreal Akanji, president of the Nigerian Baptist Convention on Sunday.
They were later reunited with their parents at the school premises.
Many of the parents whose children were still missing were, however, many unhappy as their children were not among those released but Jangado assured them that their children will be freed.
He said, “I have been talking with the bandits and they told me that the children would be released in batches and they have released the first batch of 28.”
“I appealed to parents whose children are not among the first batch not to despair as they will be released too by the grace of God. If your child is not among those released don’t be disappointed, let’s keep praying.”
On his part, Akanji said “a lot of efforts were made to ensure the release of the students. The number one effort was prayers, we prayed and prayed.
“We spoke to security agents, we spoke to the governor of Kaduna state and he promised that he was going to do his best to ensure the release of the children.
“We have waited, it is about three weeks now and finally we are grateful that we have this batch that has come.
“All together we have received 34 students out of the 121. We are still expecting 87 who have not come back yet.
“The children were just released by the people who abducted them. They kept them in a place and they called us and we went and carried them in our vehicles and brought them.
“Our prayer is that they will release the remaining students”.
According to Akanji, the church did not pay any ransom to the bandits.
“I don’t know where you got your information. I have heard a lot of information in the media. Some said we paid N60 million, some said we paid N100m,” he said.
“What we said is that as a church, we will not pay ransom because it is not right to pay people who have done what is wrong.
“I cannot answer for those who probably must have been involved in certain ways.”
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