Global Rights calls on the government to facilitate the immediate rescue of the students of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina state, who were abducted by armed bandits from their school on Friday, 11th of December, 2020. We also call on them to ensure the provision of adequate security for all schools across the country, in particular, realizing the vulnerability of schools in the North parts of the country.
It was our hope that the government had gleaned lessons from the various traumatic kidnaps of school children particularly across the Northern parts of the country by ensuring that adequate security arrangements are put in places of learning especially in locations susceptible to attacks by non-state armed groups; recollecting that in 2014, 270 female students were abducted by the armed group Boko Haram in the town of Chibok, Bornu State, subsequently, more than 100 girls in Dapchi, North East in 2018. These attacks have not been limited to Northern Nigeria, as 3 female students of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary, Ikorodu were also kidnapped in 2016, as were 8 students and staff of the Tulip International College, Ogun state in 2017 at their respective schools.
Resultantly, an entire generation of Nigerian children are suffering the vulnerability of the insecurity that has plagued the nation, jeopardizing their right to education – an essential ingredient for their future and for national development. We again call on the government at both federal and state levels across the country to prioritize and ensure the protection of schools, and also to build the security resilience of the communities in which schools across the country are situated. Without urgent action to address these attacks on school children, the future of the nation’s human resource will become locked in unending cycles of underachievement and poverty due to the fear of been attacked while in school, barring them from seeking educational opportunities.
While we commend the effort being made to rescue the victims, we emphatically state that the government has failed to live up to its primary duty of preserving the security and welfare of its people as enshrined in Section 14(2)(b) Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Our Mass Atrocities tracking reports informs that this year alone at least 4,203 people were lost to mass violence from January to November 2020. Of this number, 1895 persons were kidnapped. Last month, dozens of farmers were grotesquely murdered by insurgents in Bornu state. Despite this, the government continues to release statements saying it is winning the war over insecurity in Nigeria. The government must cease playing politics with the lives of its citizenry and begin to prioritize the lives and safety of its citizens.
We therefore urge the Federal Government to do all and everything humanly possible to rescue the missing and abducted children unharmed. It is also pertinent that all appropriate ministries begin to set in gear the process of receiving all rescued students by setting up medical, trauma support and counselling mechanisms to salvage the effect of the abduction on the boys.
Signed:
Funke Adeoye
Programs Manager
contact@globalrights.org
