FAMILIES of passengers abducted during the attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train have threatened to occupy government facilities in Kaduna State and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The families intend to take the action to protest against the government’s inability to rescue the abductees.
Representatives of the families made the threat during a press briefing in Kaduna on Thursday.
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Speaking on behalf of the families, a man whose mother and sister were still in captivity, Abdulaziz Attah, said the health condition of the victims was of grave concern to them.
“We read from the media, reports that one of our loved ones, Al-Amin, was shot and that it was an accidental discharge by one of the non-state actors guarding our loved ones, but the key question now is the state of health of the person that is injured.
“There are no antibiotics, nobody to remove the bullets from his body, just imagine the current situation he will be in the bush. He needs urgent support, if he is not brought out of the bush, we may lose him,” he said.
Attah noted that the protest would be staged next week to mark 100 days since the abduction.
According to him, key government facilities will be occupied till the abductees are released.
“By next week Tuesday, which is going to be 100 days that they have been in captivity, we are planning to do a physical protest. We will be siting in key government facilities, we planned to sit there till our loved ones are out.
“So, we are changing our strategies. We will change our strategies from the media conference, the media have been excellent to us, but now we are going to move out physically for people to see us on the streets.”
Noting that some of the abductees had been released, he urged the government to put in more effort to secure the freedom of the other victims.
“To be fair, we are seeing some of the outcomes of the government’s efforts. We have seen 11 of our loved ones that have been released, we know that the government is working on it, but what we are demanding is that they should hasten their release, every single moment they spend in the bush is dangerous.
“The agents of government that are involved in this negotiation need to do more. What we want is our loved ones out, we have kids as you have heard earlier on as young as three years old and from the feedback we had, these kids are unattended to. We have women injured, we have aged women and men, those people should be brought out,” he said.
Many passengers were kidnapped, and at least nine others killed, when terrorists attacked the train headed to Kaduna from Abuja on March 29.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via [email protected] or @ije_le on Twitter.