Mr Dare also reiterated President Bola Tinubu’s promise to ensure the remaining abductees would be rescued, but failed to give assurances on how long it would take.
In some of the worst cases in the past, kidnapped children have died in the hands of their captors – or been held for years on end, as in the case of the infamous Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram.
Analyst Bulama Bukarti told the BBC he did not agree with the government’s claims that jihadist groups were behind the recent wave of kidnappings.
“I don’t think that’s accurate. There is no Iswap or Boko Haram cell resident in the north-west. The recent kidnappings, including the mass abductions, were carried out by bandits, not Boko Haram or Iswap,”
The bandits are local armed groups, often on motorbikes, with no central organisation, who operate mainly in the north-west. Whereas Boko Haram and Iswap mainly operate hundreds of miles away, in Nigeria’s north-east.
The BBC asked Acled – an international monitoring group that analyses attacks by armed groups – to assess the three kidnappings.
Acled said in all four cases Fulani militia groups, locally called “bandits”, were responsible for the kidnappings.
Fulani herders have come into conflict with both Muslim and Christian communities across Nigeria.
It said the biggest of these, in which more than 200 schoolchildren were reportedly abducted from St Mary’s Catholic School, “appears to have been partly carried out to spite the government and achieve some political objectives”.
The church attack in southern Kwara state was “part of the Fulani expansionist drive, and as a way to displace the locals from the communities for illegal mining activities”, Acled told the BBC.
“Local displacement for mining has become the emerging pattern of the Fulani militia activities as seen in Zamfara state and the Birnin Gwari area of Kaduna state.”
Shortly after the mass kidnappings in north-western and central Nigeria, 13 teenage girls were abducted in north-eastern Borno state, the stronghold of Boko Haram. Analysts agree that this is likely to have been the work of jihadist groups.
Nigeria’s security crisis has been thrown into the international spotlight in recent weeks after US President Donald Trump threatened to send over troops “guns a-blazing” if the government “continues to allow the killing of Christians”.
Nigerian officials and analysts say that members of all faiths are victims of the violence and kidnappings and that it is not true that Christians are being targeted.
