By Abba Gwale
The Parents of the 39 kidnapped students of the Federal College of Forestry and Mechanisation, Afaka, have pleaded to Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, to negotiate with the bandits to secure the release of their wards before they kill them.
The parents lamented that over two weeks after the abduction of their children by gunmen in their hostels, the students were yet to be released.
Recall that gunmen had, on Monday, March 12 2021, attacked the school in the Mando, Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State and kidnapped 23 female and 16 male students. Later on, the bandits released a video, demanding N500 million as ransom.
While featuring on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’ programme, Sani Friday, a staff of the school and a representative of the affected parents, said the parents are afraid bandits may kill their children if the government deploy force.
He said his two daughters were amongst the students in captivity. He appealed to Governor Nasir El-Rufai to adjust his stance of no-payment-of-ransom in order to facilitate the release of the students.
“It is this state governor who sometimes ago told the entire Kaduna State that if it costs him to pay bandits to stop killing citizens of Kaduna State, he will pay them.
“Now, the state government came out even before the abduction of our students in the Federal College of Forestry that it is wrong to negotiate with bandits and that he is not going to negotiate.
“After that statement, this incident happened and it is based on that statement that the government is standing that it will not negotiate. But he (El-Rufai) made a statement before that he can do anything for the bandits to stop killing, so we want him to do something,” Friday said
He further said “One of the fears we have is that if the government feels that they can use force to bring out this children, it will be very disastrous because these bandits are well-equipped, they may decide to eliminate the children if they discover that the government is trying to use aggressive force on them because our children are being used as shields.
“Firstly, the way we want the government to go about this is to negotiate even if they want to put any other security measure on ground, it should be after the negotiation.”
Shortly after the incident, security forces had said they rescued 180 of the abductees but 39 students are still in the den of the kidnappers.
