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FG, military mum as Boko Haram claims abducting Katsina students
BY NICHOLAS ABE
There is no word yet from either the Federal Government or the military almost 24 hours after the terrorist group Boko Haram took responsibility for the abduction of over 300 students on Friday, in Katsina State.
Katsina is the home state of Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, who has faced barrage of criticisms over his inability to contain the insurgency as he had promised during the election campaigns.
Ironically, the President had just come into his home town Daura, on a seven-day private visit, when the terrorists struck.
An audio message from a man identifying himself as the leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram said on Tuesday that the Islamist group was responsible for the kidnapping of more than 300 students from an all-boys school in the north-western state of Katsina.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa language, has waged an insurgency in the northeast of Nigeria since 2009 but has not previously claimed any attacks over to the northwest.
The man purporting to be the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, offered no proof for the claim. Reuters was unable to verify the audio and Nigerian authorities did not immediately comment.
In a region where criminal gangs often rob and kidnap civilians for ransom, gunmen took the boys from the Government Science school in Kankara town on Friday. Katsina State government say some managed to escape but around 320 were still missing.
“We are behind what happened in Katsina,” said the man in the audio, which reached Reuters via a WhatsApp message.
“What happened in Katsina was done to promote Islam and discourage un-Islamic practices as Western education is not the type of education permitted by Allah and his holy prophet.”
READ: Herdsmen, Bandits kill 1,165 persons in Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto in 8 months
No video footage was released of the missing boys.
Spokesmen for the presidency, police and army did not immediately respond to messages and calls seeking comment.
Analysts have warned that West Africa’s porous borders mean other Islamist groups operating in the wider Sahel region could form alliances with jihadists in northeast Nigeria.
Boko Haram carried out the 2014 kidnap of more than 200 girls from a school in the north-eastern town of Chibok. Since then, about half of those girls have been found or freed, dozens have been paraded in propaganda videos, and an unknown number are believed to have died.
Also, in February 2018, 110 schoolgirls, aged between 11–19 years old, were kidnapped in full view of the public by Boko Haram from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State, in northeast Nigeria.
Five of the schoolgirls died on the same day of their kidnapping, all others were released in March 2018, except the lone Christian girl Leah Sharibu as she refused to abandon her faith and convert to Islam. She remains in Boko Haram captivity till date.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram began its insurgency, which aims to create an Islamic state.