KADUNA State Government and security agencies have not issued any official statement on the abduction of seven school children by unknown gunmen at a private school in the state.
Prince Academy, a school located at Damba-Kasaya village in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State was reported by Premium Times to be where seven students and a teacher were abducted on Monday.
The ICIR contacted the Department of State Security (DSS), Kaduna State Governor and the Police authorities in the state to confirm the incident and the number of casualties.
There was no response to all enquiries sent to their spokespersons as of the time of filing this report.
The ICIR waited three days for responses to messages sent to Peter Afunanya, DSS spokesperson, Muyiwa Adekeye, Special Adviser on Media and Communication to Governor Nasir El-rufai and Mohammed Jalige, Kaduna Police Command Spokesman but didn’t receive any response.
The abduction which has not received any attention from the appropriate government agencies happened around 8 a.m. when the gunmen stormed the rural community while the students were preparing for their Junior Secondary School examination.
The abducted students were said to be JSS3 students who were among the exit students asked to resume by the Federal and State Governments for their examination.
The bandit according to a resident of the area spoken to by Punch Newspaper, Bawa Wakili, said they came in large numbers and shot sporadically.
He was also reported to have said that the gunmen broke into the Aminci Baptist Church within the community where they destroyed musical instruments, including the public address system valued at thousands of naira.
Also, a youth, Akila Barde, said the assailants arrived on motorcycles well-armed.
“They came into the village shooting before they went to the school and picked the students who were receiving lessons in preparation for their Junior examination.
Sources in Kaduna however, confided in The ICIR that the state government does not want to engage along with the families to resolve the matter, noting that the most important thing to the government was to ensure the release of the school children and teachers and united with their families.
“The most important thing to the government at the moment is for those children to be released and united with their families,” said a source who did not want to be named.
But the another source said government was being careful not to allow its officials or parents of the children to talk to the press in order not to aggravate the matter.
Meanwhile, Oby Ezekwesili, a former Minister of Education, on Friday condemned the abduction of school children and a teacher.
She also condemned the silence by the Kaduna State Government and the Federal Government five days after the abduction of the school children.
The former minister of education said that the country has a penchant for repeating terrible patterns of not learning from past mistakes.
“Still no word from @GovKaduna and @NGRPresident on schoolchildren and their teacher who were abducted in Kaduna several days ago? Ezekwesili’s tweet had read.
“What a penchant for repeating terrible patterns by never learning lessons from past mistakes do we have in governance! Give JUSTICE to the children. Right to human dignity must always matter to us.”
“Those who derided @BBOG_Nigeria for stepping up to amplify the voice of the families of our #ChibokGirls for 6 years now painfully have another chance to correct their attitude of “just-look-away-when-others-are-in-pain-syndrome.”
Olayinka works with The ICIR as the Social Media Manager, Reporter and Fact-checker. You can shoot him an email via [email protected]. You can as well follow him on Twitter via @BelloYinka72