The Zamafara police unit in the early hours of Tuesday proposed that 100 kidnapped people were set to their release without any financial gains and material gains to the abductors.
The hostages would undergo medical test and checkups before reuniting with their families. The group, including women and children, had been brought to a forest hideout after gunmen, locally known as bandits, stormed Manawa village on June 8.A source familiar with the negotiations told the AFP news agency the bandits agreed to release the kidnapped villagers after the police and state authorities “assured them no action would be taken against them for the kidnap”.
The hostages’ release, without payment, could be explained by the government’s increased military activity in the area over the past few weeks, or the result of amnesty schemes granted to bandits in some states, such as in Katsina and Zamfara. “But many Nigerians believe that that amnesty has not worked, and it’s not working, because many of them [bandits] that have abandoned arms, have taken them again against the state and continued their kidnapping”.
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