Northern Elders, JNI Attack Buhari Over Schoolboys Abduction
By Emmanuel Oladesu, Deputy Editor; Okodili Ndidi, Abuja, AbdulGafar Alabelewe, Kaduna and Augustine Okezie, Katsina
President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday came under the hammer of Northern elders and the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) over weekend’s abduction of 333 students of the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Katsina State.
While the elders lamented that the “President’s idea about insecurity has proved inadequate to deal with the threat to our lives and property,” the JNI said the schoolboys’ abduction by bandits amounted to a slap on Buhari’s face.
Also on Monday, the United Nations (UN) described the incident as “a violation of human rights” and urged the safe return of the children to their families.
Before the mass abduction, Katsina and other states in the Northwest had been under onslaught by bandits.
The 333 pupils were part of the 884 students that were in the school’s hostel when the bandits struck. Four hundred and twenty of them surfaced before the Minister of Defence, Gen. Bashiir Magashi, and Service Chiefs paid a sympathy visit to Governor Aminu Masari on Sunday.
The Northern elders, under the aegis of the Coalition of Northern Elders for Peace and Development (CNEPD) , said in a statement by their National Coordinator, Zana Goni, and National Women Leader, Mario Bichi, that the attack on the students, further confirmed that the nation’s security architecture was in dire need of a total overhaul.
The group therefore, reiterated its call on Buhari to sack the service chiefs because “they are no more in charge of the security situation in the North and the entire country.”
It recalled that the National Assembly had also called for the removal of the service chiefs since their inability to stem the rising security challenges “was emboldening the adversaries in their increasing dastardly actions against the country.”
The CNEPD also suggested to the President to quickly “seek foreign help to avoid the extinction of the North through increasing mass killings of its people by the terrorists.”
According to the statement: “the latest attack on Government Science Secondary School confirms our position that our region is now at the mercy of terrorists, bandits and other criminal elements.
“As a result of this, we strongly believe that time has come for our President to bring in fresh hope and clear directions on how best the country will strategise to overcome the present insecurity situation in the country in general.
“At the boiling point, we have found ourselves today, we strongly believe that it will not be out of place to seek assistance in dealing with these threats from outside.
“We would say in the strongest possible terms that there can be no justification for the deliberate targeting of innocent school children.
– The Nation
