Masari in a statement released on Sunday, December 13, said that 333 boys were still missing after bandits struck at the school.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, however, told BBC Hausa Service that only 10 boys were abducted by the bandits.

The BBC Hausa bulletin read “The Government of Nigeria has said its security forces have surrounded the location where gunmen have kept schoolchildren abducted from a secondary school in Katsina State. The spokesman for the President, Mallam Garba Shehu, told the BBC only 10 children were remaining in the hands of the gunmen according to their colleagues who escaped from the gunmen. The number is below figures released by school authorities at the beginning. Garba Shehu said the school children who escaped said 10 of their friends were still with their abductors.”