More than 130 students abducted by gunmen from a school in Nigeria earlier this month have been released unharmed days before a ransom deadline, say officials.

Government spokesman Abdulaziz Abdulaziz told Al Jazeera on Sunday that it took a lot of backchannel engagement to release the students abducted on March 7 in Kuriga, a dusty town in Kaduna state, the first mass kidnapping in Nigeria since 2021.

He said, giving the official number of freed students at 137, much lower than the figure of 286 students and one staff member in most media reports. He claimed the media reports were wrong, but did not give further details.

Earlier on Sunday, Uba Sani, governor of the northwestern state of Kaduna, said in a statement that the hostages were freed after security operations coordinated by the country’s national security adviser.

According to Kemi Okenyodo, executive director at Partners West Africa-Nigeria, an NGO, the discrepancy between the number of children reported to have been kidnapped and the number reportedly released on Sunday suggested that there was not a proper audit of the community to know how many children were kidnapped.