This is according to a spokesman for the defense in the country on Sunday. All the released prisoners must be physically unharmed.
A little earlier, the governor of Kaduna state made a statement indicating that several hundred abductees had been released. Defense spokesman Edward Buba says, however, that there are 137 people involved.
Of these, 76 are girls or women, while 61 are boys or men. Buba tells the AFP news agency that all the students who were held captive have now been rescued.
The abduction took place on March 7 in Kuriga, north-west of Kaduna state. It was then revealed that at least 287 pupils had been kidnapped.
The country is shaken by the violent abduction of a group of siblings
It is not unusual for the number of abductees to be adjusted downwards in kidnapping cases in Nigeria, according to AFP. One of the reasons is that some of the prisoners often manage to escape.
The armed men who were behind the abduction in Kuriga last week demanded an amount equivalent to more than NOK 7.4 million to release the children and the employees.
A deadline was set to pay the money, and it expires in a few days. But Nigerian President Bola Tinubu declared that the children would be saved without paying so much as a cent.
It was the jihadist group Boko Haram that initially began abducting large groups of school children in Nigeria. Eventually, criminal gangs began to use the same method, hoping to get a ransom.
