A group of schoolboys are escorted by Nigerian military and officials following their release after they were kidnapped. In Katsina, Nigeria, on Dec 18, 2020. (SUNDAY ALAMBA / AP)

KATSINA - Scores of schoolboys who were rescued from kidnappers in northwest Nigeria arrived back home on Friday, many of them barefoot and wrapped in blankets after their week-long ordeal.

The boys, dressed in dusty clothes, looked dazed and weary but otherwise well as they got off buses in the city of Katsina and walked to a government building.

One boy, who did not give his name, said the captors had regularly beaten them with canes. He added that the kidnappers had described themselves as members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, although he suspected they were armed bandits.

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They beat us morning, every night. We suffered a lot. They only gave us food once a day and water twice a day.

One of the kidnapped boys

“They beat us morning, every night. We suffered a lot. They only gave us food once a day and water twice a day,” he told Arise television.

“They said I should say they are Boko Haram and gangs of Abu Shekau,” he added, referring to a name used by a Boko Haram leader.

“What I experienced, sincerely speaking, they are not Boko Haram ... They are just small and tiny, tiny boys with big guns,” he added.

A week earlier, gunmen on motorbikes raided the boys’ boarding school in the nearby town of Kankara and marched hundreds of them into the vast Rugu forest.

Authorities said security services rescued them on Thursday, but many details surrounding the incident remain unclear, including who was responsible, whether ransom was paid, how the boys’ release was secured and whether all of them are now safe.

Another of the boys told Reuters TV on Friday the captors had initially taken them to a hiding place. “But when they saw a jet fighter, they changed the location and hid us in a different place. They gave us food but it was very little.”

The abduction gripped a country already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.

READ MORE: Boko Haram returns most of kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls

Six years on, only about half the girls have been found or freed. Others were married off to fighters, while some are assumed to be dead.

Usama Aminu, 17 year-old, a kidnapped student of the Government Science Secondary School who escaped from bandits is seen during an interview in Kankara, Nigeria, Dec 16, 2020. (PHOTO / AP)

Hours before the rescue of the boys was announced, a video started circulating online purportedly showing Boko Haram militants with some of the boys. Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the footage or who released it.

The video, which featured Boko Haram’s emblem, showed a group of boys in a wood pleading, “Help us, help us.”

The father of one of the missing boys, who gave only his first name Umar, said his son, Shamsu Ibrahim, was one of the boys who is heard speaking in the video.

“All the armies that have come here to help us, please send them back. They can do nothing to help,” the boy says.

Tears of joy, prayers of thanks

On Friday, the boys from the Government Science Secondary School walked from the buses in single file, flanked by soldiers and armed police officers, and were taken to the government building to meet the governor.

Another of the boys said they had been fed with bread and cassava. “It was cold,” he told Channels TV. Asked how he had felt when the bus arrived in Katsina, he said: “I was really happy,” and broke into a smile.

The abduction gripped a country already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok

“We are very grateful. We are very grateful. We are very grateful,” a man who said he was the father of two of the pupils told Arise.

The boys were then brought back and driven off for medical checks, officials said.

A group of parents waited to be reunited with them in a shaded parking lot in another part of town.

Hajiya Bilikisu, in a cream-coloured veil, said she had started to lose hope that she would ever see her son, Abdullahi Abdulrazak, again.

“I was just crying, crying with joy, when I saw them, my son” in pictures after the release, she told Reuters.

“They have to recovery psychologically,” she said. “They went through trauma. We have to try to counsel them, so they can now become normal persons.”

Hafsat Funtua, mother of 16-year-old Hamza Naziru, said she ran out of her house with joy “not knowing where to go” when she heard the news.

Describing the moment she heard the news, she said she ran out of her house with joy “not knowing where to go” before returning home to pray.

A group of schoolboys gather following their release after they were kidnapped last week. In Katsina, Nigeria, on Dec 18, 2020. (SUNDAY ALAMBA / AP)

President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed the students’ release and asked for patience while his administration dealt with security issues.

“We have a lot of work to do,” he said in a statement but added, “We will deal with all that.”

Last week’s mass kidnapping piled pressure on the government to deal with militants in the north of the country.

It was particularly embarrassing for Buhari, who comes from Katsina state and has repeatedly said that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated”.

READ MORE: Nigerian air force destroys one hideout of Boko Haram

Buhari said he had congratulated the state’s governor and the army, in a brief clip from an interview posted on his Twitter account earlier on Friday.

Any Boko Haram involvement would mark a geographical expansion in its activities from its base in the northeast. The region is also plagued by armed gangs that rob and kidnap for ransom.