ABUJA, Oct 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Police said they had freed nearly 150 students from a purported school in northern Nigeria that claimed it was teaching the Koran but had instead subjected them to abuse.
It was the fourth such operation in a month and brings the total released from religious schools in northern Nigeria to more than 1,000.
Kaduna state governor Nasir El Rufai ordered the Saturday raid on the Islamic reform school in Rigasa, officials said. The captives were gathered later at a camp nearby, standing in lines in maroon uniforms as state officials tended to them.
Unlike the other schools, at least 22 of the 147 released captives were female, Hafsat Baba, Kaduna’s commissioner for human services said.
An official said the school was owned by the same man who owned one of the schools raided in neighboring Katsina state last week and had already been arrested by police.
Those freed from other schools over the past month – including two this week – were chained to walls, beaten and sexually molested.
At the other raided facilities, some parents thought their children would be educated and even paid tuition. Other families sent misbehaving or difficult family members and wards to them for discipline.
The raid will put more pressure on President Muhammadu Buhari to take action on loosely regulated Islamic schools called Almajiris, which experts say teach millions of children across the mainly Muslim north of the country.
Buhari, whose home state is Katsina, said in June that he planned to ban Almajiris eventually but would not do so right away.
Buhari’s office, in a statement issued about the latest rescue, said “no responsible democratic government would tolerate the existence of the torture chambers and physical abuses of inmates in the name of rehabilitation of the victims.” — NNN-AGENCIES
