Crime
How El-Rufai reacted to latest video of kidnapped victims asking for mercy, ransoms
Bandits who abducted the 39 students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna, released another video of the students pleading with their parents and government to do something about the criminals’ demand.
Two of the victims spoke in the video, explaining how grueling their 47 days in captivity have been.
In the latest video, a pregnant student simply identified as “Hajiya” begged her parents to come to her rescue, adding that for days, they have been without food.
“We appeal to our parents to help us. We are tired and there is no food. They should do their best to get us out of this place. We have spent 47 days, almost all of us are ill and there is no food. We sleep in the open even when it rains,” said Hajiya.
Another woman, a wife of a naval officer serving in Delta, also spoke along that line.
She too pleaded with the Federal Government to come to their rescue, saying that the bandits had earlier agreed on N30 million ransom for their release.
The bandits demanded N500 million when they first abducted the students
But Gov El Rufai resisted then, saying his governmrnt would never pay bandits.
More than 40 days after, the governor hasn’t chaged his position, despite killing by kidnappers of victims abducted in another incident.
“The fact that criminals seek to hold us by the jugular does not mean we should surrender and create an incentive for more crime,” he said through his media aide Muyiwa Adekeye on April 27..
“In today’s Nigeria, it has become fashionable to treat the unlawful demands of bandits as worthy of consideration and to lampoon people who insist that outlaws should be crushed and not mollycoddled or availed the resources they can use to unleash further outrages.”
He, however, sent his condolences to the families of five Greenfield University students killed among those in bandits’ captivity.
“The ruthless and heartless resort of the kidnappers to murdering these young persons is part of their effort to further their blackmail and compel us to abandon our ‘no-ransom, no-negotiation’ policy,” he said.
“Are people bothering with the consequences of state surrender to hoodlums, or is the continued politicization of security challenges not going to make all of us ultimately victims of the insurgents?”