Kano: Two weeks after being kidnapped on their way to school, eight Nigerian schoolgirls were reported to have escaped from their captors in northwest Kaduna State, according to a government official.

Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna state internal affairs commissioner, said in a statement late Tuesday that the students of Government Secondary School Awon in Kachia district were taken on April 3 in the most recent kidnapping of students in the area.

After a lull during the presidential and governorship elections in February and March, kidnappings for ransom and intercommunal attacks have been on the rise once more, especially in northwest Nigeria.

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As part of a cash exchange policy that was allegedly put in place to reduce ransom payments to kidnappers, the government recently lifted restrictions on cash bank notes.

The eight female students have managed to escape the terrorists' hideout, according to Aruwan, who made no mention of their ages.

In order to facilitate military action against criminal militia gangs, the government of Nigeria last year designated them as terrorist organisations.
Before changing the number to eight, Aruwan had initially claimed that 10 students from the school that offers day classes had been taken.

In order to get to a place where they were given shelter, the hostages had to walk for several days through "a thick forest" on the border between Kaduna and central Niger State, according to Aruwan.

Before being reunited with their families, the students were taken for medical examinations as soldiers searched the forest for the kidnappers, he continued.

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In an attack on another farming village over the weekend in Kaduna state, where intercommunal herder-farmer violence frequently erupts, gunmen killed 33 people.

A local government official reported that the attackers stormed a village in the Zangon Kataf district on Saturday, shooting at locals and torching homes as they fled.

Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling APC party who won the presidential election in February despite technical difficulties and accusations of vote-rigging from the opposition, will face significant challenges as president-elect due to insecurity.

Several states in northwest and central Nigeria, including Kaduna, are terrorised by gangs that raid villages, murder and kidnap locals, loot, and set homes on fire.

Over the past two years, hundreds of students have been abducted in the area.

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Nearly all of them were freed after their families paid the ransom. The growing connections between armed bandits driven by monetary gain and jihadists waging a 14-year-old armed rebellion in northeastern Nigeria have alarmed officials and analysts.

Ansaru and Boko Haram jihadist groups were establishing camps in the state's Birnin Gwari district from their traditional northeast stronghold, Kaduna state governor Malam Nasir El-Rufa'i warned last year.