Nigeria police freed four secondary school girls on Saturday, a few days after they were abducted by gunmen and only a day after 15 other schoolchildren were set free.
“Six students of the Federal Government Girls College, Ikot-Ekpene, travelling back from Lagos to their school in a public bus were kidnapped early this week by gunmen,” Abia state police spokesperson Geofrey Ogbonna said.
Four of the girls were rescued in a police operation at Onitsha-Ngwa, a border village between Abia and neighbouring Akwa Ibom State, he said.
“The kidnappers ran away with the two remaining students,” he added.
Along with the four students, a man and a woman who had been kidnapped by the gunmen earlier were also rescued, he added.
Gunmen had kidnapped and held four local journalists for a week in the same area in July, Ogbonna recalled.
A local community leader in Aba, Danny Ubani, confirmed to AFP the release of the kiidnapped girls on Saturday.
On Friday morning, troops and police freed a group of 15 school children who had been kidnapped in their school bus on Monday.
The hijacking of the children took place on the outskirts of the commercial city of Aba, in Abia State, in Nigeria’s oil-rich south.
The kidnappers demanded a 20-million-naira ransom, and parents of some of the children on Thursday begged the abductors to release them, saying they could not afford to pay the money.
Much of Aba city was shut down this week after the hijacking out of fears of further kidnappings.
Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region has seen scores of kidnappings in recent years, often by criminal gangs seeking ransom payments but also by militants demanding a fairer distribution of oil revenue.
Most kidnappings initially involved foreign oil workers, but more recently the attackers have also targeted the children and relatives of wealthy Nigerians.
Most of those abducted were freed unharmed, often after the payment of a ransom.