Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist rebels have claimed responsibility for the abduction of hundreds of pupils in an attack on a boys’ school in northern Katsina state, according to a Nigerian online newspaper.

More than 330 children are missing from the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara after gunmen with assault rifles attacked their school on Friday night.

The Daily Nigerian said it received an audio message from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau saying his group abducted the schoolboys because Western education is against the tenets of Islam.

“What happened in Katsina was done to promote Islam and discourage un-Islamic practices as Western education is not the type of education permitted by Allah and his Holy Prophet,” the paper quoted Mr Shekau as saying.

There has been no independent verification of the audio message but Mr Shekau has in the past released video and audio messages on Boko Haram’s behalf.

Nigerian presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said in a statement on Monday that “the kidnappers had made contact and discussions were already on, pertaining to the safety and return” of the children to their homes.

Mr Shehu said nothing about the identity of the abductors.

Several armed groups operate in north-western Nigeria, where Katsina state is located.

It was originally believed the attackers were bandits, who sometimes work with Boko Haram.

The government said a joint rescue operation was launched on Saturday by Nigeria’s police, air force and army after the military engaged in gunfights with bandits after locating their hideout in the Zango/Paula forest.

Many of the more than 600 male pupils were able to escape during the attack while police engaged in a gunfight, according to Katsina state police spokesman Gambo Isah.

Boko Haram has in the past abducted pupils from schools.

The most serious school attack took place in April 2014, when more than 270 schoolgirls were abducted from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School in Chibok in north-eastern Borno State.

About 100 of the girls are still missing.

Boko Haram said at the time it wanted to stop women from attending schools.

The recent incident at the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara is the worst attack on a boys’ school since February 2014, when 59 were killed during a Boko Haram attack on the Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe State.

Boko Haram and the breakaway faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, are fighting to impose strict Islamic Shariah rule in Nigeria.

Thousands have been killed in the more than 10-year-old insurgency and more than a million people displaced.

Read more: Nigerian schoolgirl rescued after two years as Boko Haram captive

Video of Chibok girls puts pressure on Nigeria’s Buhari

Nigeria is facing mounting pressure to find some 200 schoolgirls abducted 1,000 days ago in Boko Haram’s most infamous attack after the rescue of 24 girls raised hopes that they are alive.

For more than two years there was no sign of the girls who were kidnapped by the Islamist fighters from a school in Chibok in northeast Nigeria one night in April 2014, sparking global outrage and a celebrity-backed campaign #bringbackourgirls.

But the discovery of one of the girls with a baby last May fuelled hopes for their safety, with a further two girls found in later months and a group of 21 released in October in a deal brokered by Switzerland and the International Red Cross.

For parents like Rebecca Joseph the return home of the group of 21 girls at Christmas was a bitter-sweet celebration.

Her daughter, Elizabeth, is one of an estimated 195 girls still held captive by the jihadist group, which has tried to force some of them to convert to Islam and to marry their captors.

“I am happy that some of the girls are returning home even though my own daughter is not among them,” Joseph told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the town of Chibok in Borno state.

“My prayer is that my daughter and the rest of the girls will be rescued and returned to their families safe.”

With last weekend marking 1,000 days since the girls were abducted, President Muhammadu Buhari said he remained committed to ensuring the abducted schoolgirls are reunited with their families “as soon as practicable”.

“We are hopeful that many more will still return,” said Buhari, who came to power in 2015 and replaced a government criticised for not doing enough to find the missing girls.

“The tears never dry, the ache is in our hearts,” he said in a statement.

STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM

The Nigerian government said last month that it was involved in negotiations aimed at securing the release of some of the girls as the army captured a key Boko Haram camp, the militant group’s last enclave in the vast Sambisa forest.

The exact number of Chibok girls still in captivity is believed to be 195 but it has been hard to pin down an exact number since the girls went missing.

Academics and security experts say it may be a huge challenge to obtain the girls’ freedom given the significance of the abduction for Boko Haram, which has killed about 15,000 people in its seven-year insurgency to set up an Islamic state.

“Outside Nigeria, the Chibok girls have come to symbolise the Boko Haram conflict,” said Sola Tayo, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

“The global outrage generated by their captivity has added to their value to the insurgents,” she added, adding that they were also significant to Buhari because he made their release a key campaign pledge before his 2015 election.

The government said in October that it had not swapped Boko Haram fighters or paid a ransom for the release of the 21 girls but several security analysts said it was implausible that the Islamist group would have let the girls go for nothing.

“To secure the release of the remaining girls would require concessions by the Nigerian government, which could reverse significant gains it has made against Boko Haram,” said Ryan Cummings, director of risk management consultancy Signal Risk.

“In addition to detainees, Boko Haram may also demand supplies, weapons, vehicles and even money which they could use to recalibrate and invigorate their armed campaign against the Nigerian state.”

DEEP DIVISIONS

One of the major obstacles to securing the release of all of the Chibok girls who remain in captivity is the deep divisions emerging within Boko Haram, said Freedom Onuoha, a security analyst and lecturer at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka.

The militants split last year with one faction moving away from the group’s established figurehead Abubakar Shekau over his failure to adhere to guidance from Islamic State to which Boko Haram pledged allegiance in 2015.

It is unclear how many Chibok girls are held by the main faction led by Shekau, thought to be based in the Sambisa, and by the Islamic State-allied splinter group – headed by Abu Musab al-Barnawi and believed to operate in the Lake Chad area.

“It will be difficult to release most of the remaining girls as each faction will maintain a strong hold on them and would negotiate with state officials on their own terms,” said Onuoha.

While the deal to free the 21 girls was seen as a huge boost for the government’s assertions that it would soon bring home the others, a lack of progress since then has seen public hopes dwindle and frustrations arise, academics said.

Although Nigeria has driven Boko Haram out of most of the territory it held, its battle against the militants will not be considered over until the fate of all of the Chibok girls is made clear, said Nnamdi Obasi of the International Crisis Group.

“From various indications, it is most unlikely that all the remaining girls will come home alive, but the government owes their parents and the public the fundamental responsibility of accounting for every one of them,” the Nigeria analyst said.

A video showing 15 of the 219 schoolgirls held by the jihadist group Boko Haram has added pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their release, after activists accused authorities of mishandling the case in the two years since their mass kidnap.

Weeping parents identified the girls captured by Boko Haram fighters, who want to establish an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria and have waged a seven-year campaign of violence, killing thousands of people and displacing two million.

President Muhammadu Buhari, elected a year ago on a promise to end endemic graft and crush the group, said in December the government could talk to Boko Haram if credible representatives emerged.

In January he said the government was launching a new investigation into the kidnapping, vowing to return the girls captured at a school in the town of Chibok while taking exams. But little has emerged since then.

In the video, apparently taken in December and given to government officials by Boko Haram as proof of life for the negotiations, a person asks the 15 girls to say their names as they stand quietly in two rows, wearing headscarves.

“I saw all the girls and they are Chibok girls,” Esther Yakubu, a parent of one of the abducted girls who saw the video broadcast by CNN said. “I recognise some of them because we are in the same area with them.”

Yakubu was marching with some 30 other parents and activists to the presidential villa in the capital Abuja to demand the government do more to return the girls. Police stopped them at the road leading to the villa.

Witnesses to the kidnapping, Nigerian military and security officials, Western diplomats and counter-terrorism experts blame a series of failings by politicians and the military in dealing with the militants, including a lack of co-ordination.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed told CNN the government was still reviewing the video. When asked about efforts to get the girls released he only said: “There are ongoing talks.”

A top government official who declined to be named, said an official reaction would only be made once the military had established the video’s authenticity.

Buhari said in a statement he hoped the girls would be “rescued”, suggesting the army will try to liberate them.

“Thousands of persons, mostly women and children, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, have already been rescued and reunited with their families,” he said, without mentioning the video.

Buhari said he “continues to believe that with the total commitment of the Federal Government, Nigerian Armed Forces and security agencies…the girls will be eventually rescued.”

INFORMATION “LOST”

Activists said Buhari’s government is not doing enough, urging the state to use the video for clues to find the girls and speak to girls who had managed to flee Boko Haram captivity.

“The incredible wealth of information that victims of terrorists can offer our security forces is being lost in the current undefined and ineffective approach,” Aisha Yesufu of the #BringBackOurGirls group said in a statement.

Buhari has blamed his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan who was slow to react to the abduction.

Under Buhari’s command, Nigerian troops backed up by Chad, Niger and Cameroon have recaptured most of territory held by Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year.

However, Boko Haram has no unified leadership which makes it difficult for the government to find someone to negotiate with, analysts say.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a video circulated last month in which he seemed to suggest he was ailing and Boko Haram was losing its effectiveness. But another video emerged last week saying there would be no surrender.

Fulan Nasrullah, a security analyst, said there was little chance of a breakthrough in the talks between the government and the militants after the failure of previous efforts.

“The government is angry about the leak, as are the insurgents,” he said. “The insurgents are not currently willing to negotiate for the girls following the government’s alleged bad faith in previous negotiations,” he said.

Muhammadu Buhari, a Sunni Muslim and a former military dictator, has surprisingly won the 2015 Presidential elections in Nigeria after three consecutive defeats. Buhari has campaigned on a platform of ‘change’, promising economic stability, to curb corruption and to utilise political strength in tackling the terrorist group, Boko Haram.

The Buhari government, however, has faced international criticism, due to the clash between the army and the minority Shia community in Zaria. Reports of events prior to the clash are unclear, the army asserts that the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff, Genenral Tukur Buratai, was blockaded near Zaria and the convoy was attacked by a petrol bomb. The Shia Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) deny any attack occurred and demand the release of their leader Ibraheem Zakzaky.

The government forces raided Zakzaky’s home and the whereabouts of his wife and sons are unknown. The IMN have stated that they have been killed in the raid, however, the Nigerian authorities have declared that his wife is in custody. Iran has condemned the attacks and called for the release of the Shiite leader. The movement has also been confronted by Boko Haram.

The problem remains complex: it would be too simplistic to apportion the blame to Shia and Sunni tensions as these continue to be manipulated by political ambitions. This is true for Zakzaky, who is deeply influenced by Iranian clerics, who believe themselves to be the saviours and provide leadership and guidance for Shia Muslims across the world.

Iran is the only Islamic regime to be run by a Shia-led administration. Thus, Iranian clerics continue to support any prominent actor that will aid in increasingly Shiite influence around the globe. Zakzaky’s IMN received financial contributions from Iran. The Islamic movement has had several clashes with government forces, leading to the capture and imprisonment of 120 Shiite followers. However, Zakzaky denies any financial backing from Iranian sources.

Zakzaky has asserted his support for an Islamic revolution much in the style of Iran, while his followers are believed to receive paramilitary training. Iran received a useful ally in Nigeria, albeit not as important as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranian vision of entrancing Shia Islam into global mainstream politics remains important. Analysts agree that IMN adds further tensions along ethnic lines. Previous administrations have also attacked the IMN. For instance, in July 2014, stressing they were defending themselves after soldiers were abducted in a ‘peaceful processions’ supporting Palestine. The police suggest that four people were killed but the IMN claims 25 were killed – including two of Zakzaky’s sons.

The clashes are not limited to a Sunni President in power. This questions the source of the Sunni-Shia tensions. In Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are battlefields for the proxy wars of Iran and Saudi Arabia, each attempting to entrench their political dominance within the Middle East. Thus, the tensions in Nigeria to a smaller extent could be a Shia resurgence within Africa, in the political vision of Iran.

The political ramifications of Zakzaky’s power should not be overstated as the main security threat remains Boko Haram. When examining Nigerian affairs, however, in terms of Sunni-Shia violence, more detail must be given to foreign power politics than religious difference alone.

Samiha Sharif holds a Masters of Science in International Politics from SOAS. She Currently volunteering at Tell MAMA. And writes in a personal capacity.

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