By Ade Martins-
Gunmen in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state kidnapped eight secondary school students coming from school along with an unspecified number of other hostages, The Eye Of Media.Com has heard.
In the latest in a wave of such abductions, the school children were abducted on what is believed to be in pursuit of ransom payments.
Armed gangs operating in northwest Nigeria have made a habit of kidnapping schools children and motorists for ransom, many of them making a living in a country where hardship is rife and where even employed professionals often go months without earning a salary despite having worked.
The terrible state of governance in West Africa’s most populated country has led to intolerable levels of crime, making security one of the nations gravest problems which successive governments have failed to defeat.
According to sources, a number of ransoms have actually paid in many cases to release victims of kidnappers, though it remains unclear what arrangements are made to pay the kidnappers without them being arrested.
Samuel Aruwan, the commissioner for internal security in Kaduna, said gunmen on Monday abducted the eight students from Awon Government Secondary School in the Kachia local government area.
It was not immediately clear where the students were taken to, but the kidnappers often keep victims in the forests and only release them when a ransom is paid.
“The management of the school has submitted the names and classes of the kidnapped students,” said Aruwan.
Insecurity is one of the biggest challenges facing Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu, who is to be sworn in, in May in the likely event the court challenges against him are not successful.
Nigeria’s military has been fighting armed groups like Boko Haram in the northeast, which has left it thinly stretched to tackle the kidnapping gangs known locally as bandits.
Many of the bandits are said to be Islamic extremists from the Fulani tribe, who generally target rich politicians and children of parents they consider to be well enough to pay the ransom.
School children in northern Nigeria live in perpetual fear, with many parents either opting for home schooling, or choosing not to have their children out of educated.