Governor Bello Masari countered with the presidency on the number of boys kidnapped from the Government Science Secondary School in the Katsina State city of Kankara,.
In a statement released on Sunday 13 December, Masari said that after bandits struck the school, 333 boys were still missing.
However, Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President for Media and Publicity, told the BBC Hausa Service that only 10 boys were kidnapped by the bandits.
The Bulletin of the BBC Hausa read;
The Government of Nigeria said that its security forces surrounded the place where gunmen held schoolchildren kidnapped from high school in the state of Katsina.
Presidential spokesman Mallam Garba Shehu told the BBC that only 10 children remained in the gunmen’s hands, according to their colleagues who fled from the gunmen.
The number is below the figures published at the start by the school authorities. The school children who escaped said 10 of their friends were still with their abductors, Garba Shehu said.