HURIWA blasts FG over mass abduction at Girls’ Secondary School, Kebbi

…Questions what N595 billion budgeted for Intelligence community in 2024 used for?

IGNATIUS OKOROCHA, Abuja

The country woke up to the news of an early-morning attack on the Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, in the Danko Wasagu Local Government Area (LGA) of Kebbi State, North West Nigeria, and the abduction of scores of students by terrorists.

The incident begs answers as to whether the federal government truly invested massively towards school security initiatives in the Country as it claimed.

HURIWA has queried the whereabouts of a whooping sum of N595 billion reportedly budgeted for the publicly funded intelligence community.

In a media statement endorsed by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko condemned the bloody attack of the girls Secondary school in Kebbi state by terrorists and blamed it on spectacular intelligence and security failures.

“We call on the heads of the security institutions, the armed forces, the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force, to immediately activate mechanisms to chase these terrorists, rescue the hostages who are our daughters, arrest, neutralise or decimate the terrorists abductors or bring them to Swift justice.

We urge the government to put foolproof and sustainable security and intelligence gathering initiatives all across the country to prevent reoccurrence of such dastardly crimes of mass abduction of students.

Those who kidnap students are terrorists and must be dealt with in accordance with the extant counter terrorism laws of the Federation.

Government must realise that the primary duty it owes the citizens is to protect their lives and property from wanton terrorists attacks and mass killings,” HURIWA affirmed.

HURIWA has also charged the government to focus on implementing concrete measures to protect school children all around Nigeria instead of relying on conjecture, even as the Rights group blasted the Minister of Education Dr Tunji Alausa, for openly bragging in May of this year that there have been no school abductions in the country over the past 12 months.

Alausa spoke on Arise TV while reviewing the mid-term performance of the government on education and attributed the achievement to the current government’s focused policies and increased security spending.

Alausa stated that the government has implemented a safe school initiative with a central command centre in Abuja, manned by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

“I am the chief education officer of Nigeria now and I would tell you that no abduction has occurred in schools in the last 12 months.

This is not coincidence This is due to the clear, focused government policies of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

“The president has spent much on security like no government has done in the last 20 years. We are using both kinetic and non-kinetic strategies. I will leave the other details for the NSA to discuss.

But what we have done to make our schools safer…we have a safe school initiative that is in place,” he said.

HURIWA faulted the claims of the Education minister and maintained that the most recent daring and bloody attack on the Kebbi state government girls Secondary school demonstrates that the government relies more on propaganda and empty rhetoric rather than investing in real time substantial resources and deployment of trained manpower to provide security of lives and property of students in their schools.

HURIWA recalled that the Kebbi state terrorists attack took place around 4:00 a.m., shortly before dawn prayers.

Local sources say the attackers stormed the school premises, killing a staff member and injuring a security guard before escaping with several girls.

Residents of Maga, a community under the Danko Wasagu LGA, with its headquarters in Ribah, said that the assailants “have not gone far” and are believed to still be within reach.

They are calling for urgent intervention from both the Federal and Kebbi State Governments to prevent the terrorists from disappearing with the abducted students.

Security forces have yet to issue any official statement on the latest mass abduction of school children.

HURIWA recalled that in recent years, Kebbi State has witnessed a disturbing surge in school abductions, which is part of a broader pattern of insecurity plaguing the northwestern region.

Historicallyy, the most notorious incident occurred on June 17, 2021, when armed attackers stormed the Federal Government College in Birnin Yauri.

The assailants killed a police officer and abducted at least 80 students and five teachers.

The Rights group wondered why these attacks on students have been allowed to continue even when the nation by now should have learnt good enough lessons from the cases of previous incidents in Borno, Kaduna, Yobe and Kebbi states, just as HURIWA asserted that preventive law enforcement is much better than letting crimes happen before the security apparatus are activated to go after the terrorists.

“We wonder why the National Assembly members go to bed once they approve the massive budgets for security and intelligence community without carrying out efficient oversight functions on the relevant security institutions to compel the mainstreaming of the twin values of accountability and transparency.

There is a story making the rounds that the law makers deliberately undermine their oversight functions by compromising with the security heads because of pecuniary benefits.