Ekiti school children: End kidnapping in Nigeria now!

Proving themselves to always be ahead of the country’s security agencies, kidnappers continue every now and then to change their strategies and patterns of operations; leaving residents in all parts of the country more vulnerable than ever before. Five school pupils, four teachers and a bus driver were on Monday, January 29, 2014, kidnapped in […]

Proving themselves to always be ahead of the country’s security agencies, kidnappers continue every now and then to change their strategies and patterns of operations; leaving residents in all parts of the country more vulnerable than ever before. Five school pupils, four teachers and a bus driver were on Monday, January 29, 2014, kidnapped in Emure Ekiti, Ekiti State.

The school bus, which was conveying the pupils of Apostolic Faith Nursery and Primary School at about 5pm back to their homes in Eporo-Ekiti, was ambushed when gunmen shot at its tyres. After forcing the pupils down from the bus to lie facing the ground, the gunmen picked up some of the pupils and walked them into the forest. Governor of Ekiti State, Biodun Oyebanji, who described the act as callous and unacceptable, said nothing would be spared in the efforts to rescue them; adding that security was being stepped up across the state with a view to flushing out criminal elements from their hideouts.

The public relations officer of the Ekiti Police Command, DSP Sunday Abutu, said the Rapid Response Squad in collaboration with military personnel, Amotekun Corps, vigilantes, local hunters, and members of Agbekoya Group, were all deployed for a bush combing operation with a mandate to bring the pupils and their teachers back safely.

A day after the abduction, the kidnappers made contact with the parents and relatives of the victims demanding the payment of a total ransom of N100 million before the 10 victims would be released. The kidnappers threatened to harm the victims if the ransom was not raised quickly.

• Name sponsors of terrorism, Sharia Council tells EFCC
• INEC suspends officer over ‘missing’ ballot papers in Plateau

Meanwhile, parents of the kidnapped pupils on Thursday, February 1, 2024, cried out and said their children had been left without food and shelter since their abduction. The proprietor of the school, Mr Gabriel Adesanya, also said the kidnapped pupils and staff of the school were being subjected to maltreatment by their captors.

Lamenting their helplessness, the parents and relations of the victims appealed to the state and federal governments to ensure the safe return of the pupils and other abductees. This is as they continued negotiations with the kidnappers.  Even as late as Saturday, February 3, 2024, there were reports that the kidnappers rejected N7 million raised by the victims’ parents for their release. The victims were later released at about 2am on Sunday, Feb 4th, almost seven days after their abduction. It is not yet clear how much was finally paid to secure their freedom.

It is a lot of anguish for anyone to have his/her own held by kidnappers even for a day, not to talk of seven days. The pain is worse if the victim is a child.

We, at Daily Trust, condemn this attack on the most vulnerable set of citizens, children, and ask that everything possible must be done to prevent a reoccurrence. With about a thousand students and dozens of teachers being victims of kidnapping since the abduction of 276 girls on April 14, 2014, from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, this is the first time primary school pupils are victims; adding a new dimension to the criminal act of kidnapping for ransom.

This new dimension reveals how the criminal elements are attempting to shift attention from university and secondary school students to other soft targets such as primary school pupils; being the most vulnerable group. The future of the country is at stake if kids cannot attend school for fear of abduction.

This abduction of school pupils lends much credence to the recent assertion by the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, that criminals think ahead of our security operatives as the former change their strategies more often than the latter. The migration of these criminal elements from one part of the country to another where they can ‘make’ more money illustrates how they have become more strategic in their modus operandi and intelligence gathering than the state actors in charge of the nation’s security.

It appears our security agencies lack mutual synergy to frontally confront the country’s security challenges. As we have repeatedly observed on this page, technical surveillance with the use of modern communication tools is obviously lacking in the operations of our security agencies. Otherwise, what else would it cost to track kidnappers to their dens when the negotiations for ransom demands are always concluded on cell phones? If the security operatives were diligent enough in gathering enough intelligence, they would have been able to forestall the strategic migration of these criminals from one part of the country to another.

Also, there is no need for security operatives to wait for incidents to be reported in any part of the country before they act. They should be on alert all the time across the country so that criminals do not have time to migrate from one point to another.

It remains worrisome that the several arrests of suspected bandits or kidnappers have not led to the arrest of their kingpins; a reason to possibly suggest why kidnapping has remained intractable. Our last word in Daily Trust to the country’s security chiefs is; end kidnapping across the country now. Enough is enough.