There was fury on the streets of Katsina yesterday as residents protested the kidnapping of hundreds of Government Science Secondary School (GSSS) students in the Kankara Local Government Area of the state.
Gunmen, suspected to be terrorists had, on Friday night, attacked the school, shot a policeman in the leg, and took away the students to an unknown destination.
The protesters, made up of women and youths, lamented the fate of their children and wards as they called on relevant authorities to rescue them.
Some of the protesters, whose children or siblings were missing, displayed inscriptions: ‘We need our children back,’ ‘Government must talk,’ ‘Kankara wants the children back,’ among others.
A source in the area said the protest was organised by a Katsina lady, based in Kaduna State, whose son was abducted during the attack.
“The woman came with some of her friends and she rallied other women and youths in the area, and they took to the streets, chanting slogans that condemned the security problem in the area.”
Efforts to get the Principal and the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) chairman of GSSS Kankara, to speak on the incident were unsuccessful, as they were said to have been “restricted” from speaking with newsmen on the matter.
Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, yesterday said 333 of the 839 students of the school were yet to be accounted for.
Earlier, an unconfirmed report had said 54 of them over 800 students were missing even as President Muhammadu Buhari, who is in the state for a one-week visit, ordered for a quick military operation to rescue the students.
Following the incident, Governor Aminu Masari ordered the closure of all boarding secondary schools, even as he assured parents of concerted effort to rescue those abducted.
Friday’s attack on the Katsina school and subsequent abduction of some students may not be disconnected from the president’s visit to his home state.
Usually, when the nation’s number one citizen visits any state, major security apparatus is deployed to his service, inadvertently leaving the state and citizens exposed.
Apart from deploying their own large security details when visiting parts of the country, state police commands, state DSS, state military commands, Federal Road Safety Corp officials, and other security units are always on duty to protect the president, vice president, or any of their family members.
This practice, security experts believe, always leaves states vulnerable during high-profile visits.
The police. In their report, had said 200 of the students had been rescued, and that efforts were on to rescue the rest of the students.
But Masari told a delegation of service chiefs who visited him at the Government House that, based on government records, the whereabouts of 333 students remained unknown.
He said the search for the said students was ongoing and that there were fears suspected bandits who attacked the school at the weekend might have abducted them.
The governor said, “the children kidnapped cut across the state because the school is a boarding school; it houses children from all parts of the state and some even from outside the state.”
The school, according to him, has 839 students and 333 have not been accounted for.
He, however, expressed the hope that more students would still return from forests, to where they had run for safety. Theguardianng
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