Kankara, Kagara, Jangebe school abductions: How govt’s ‘ostrich’ approach emboldens bandits and criminals

*The despair, trauma, despondency experience by victims and their families should be addressed — CDD

FOLLOWING what many have described as the latest round of extreme national trauma occasioned by the recent abduction of students from secondary schools in Kagara, Niger and Jangebe, Zamfara states respectively, several critical questions have come to the fore. The most fundamental of those questions has to do with how decisively government at federal, state and local level will respond to the ugly trend of school abductions in terms of taking serious steps to prevent further audacious criminality against young citizens striving to get an education. 

While many traumatised Nigerians believe the government does not need to wait for another abduction before taking steps to prevent such wanton criminality, others have simply resigned to fate, insisting the government, especially at federal level has lost the desire to proactively secure and protect the country. 

Such skeptical citizens have accused the President Buhari-led government of adopting the ostrich approach in the specific context of school abductions. They lamented what they described as an unacceptable situation wherein a school abduction happens, then the nation faces the shame of being at the mercy of criminals for weeks. 

Disturbed citizens who spoke to Naija Times further pointed out that the trend appears to be that after serious global and national outrage, and the victims are released, the government fails to learn the critical lessons required to prevent such criminality in the future. 

“As soon as the abductees are released, the government basks in the euphoria of the moment, and then returns to its normal routine as if waiting for another abduction to happen,” lamented an Abuja resident. 

“Ordinarily, we as citizens expect that the government through the security agencies would have studied the way these bad boys carry out these criminal acts. This will enable them educate schools and communities about how to prevent such from happening in the future. What I see is that instead of thinking of ways to stop these evil acts from happening, the government will just be waiting until it happens because they do not really care,” he said.

Similarly, concerned citizens groups are of the view that the government should be doing a lot more than waiting and reacting to such situations. They therefore urged a more proactive strategy to mitigate such security threats, which could undermine the confidence of young people and their families in the safety of school environments. 

Emphasising this point,  Idayat Hassan, Director of the frontline pro-democracy think tank, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), said even after the release of the students of Kagara and Jangebe, the despair, trauma and despondency the victims and their families will be going through as they recount their ordeal, is better left to the imagination.

She said: “The trauma of families who had their children in the hands of such deadly criminals can be better imagined. CDD finds it totally unacceptable that the children of Nigeria are being subjected to the dehumanising and traumatic experiences, which the bandits have continued to subject them to. 

“It is a slap on the face of the entire country that common criminals have turned the national space into a lawless, chaotic and nasty place. It is most unfair to the long suffering citizens of Nigeria that the Buhari government has woefully failed to stem the tide of insecurity. It is not tenable that Nigerians, especially young people seeking an education, can no longer do so in a secure, peaceful and conducive atmosphere.” 

Hassan was of the view that to prevent further abductions, the government needs to adopt a holistic approach.  She said the government could no longer continue to hide its head in the sands in the hope that the wave of kidnapping of school children will simply go away. 

“In fact, from the evidence on the ground, the bandits will become even more daring, especially as they have been getting generous financial returns from hefty sums paid to them as ransom. Government therefore needs to effectively perform its primary function of ensuring the security of lives and property of all Nigerians. In this regard, CDD warns that the resort to measures meant to placate and pamper the criminals responsible for these abductions, will lead to further heinous crimes,” she said.  

Apart from the outrage against the spate of school abductions, which are fast becoming the norm in Nigeria, other experts have talked about the aspect of prosecuting and deterring criminality. There are concerns that after the perpetrators commit those heinous crimes, the government has shown very little resolve to investigate, apprehend and prosecute those involved. With respect to the Zamfara abductions for instance, the state governor Bello Matawalle is on record to have stated that while in negotiations with the bandits, some other groups had offered monies to ensure the girls remained in captivity. 

Although the governor claimed he had sent the information to the security agencies, whether they will use such to move quickly and unmask those involved and bring them to justice, is a different kettle of fish. On the importance of dealing decisively with criminality, a frontline activist and conflict transformation practitioner, Comrade Jaye Gaskiya seriously warned against treating crimes with kid gloves. He said abductions are acts of criminality, which should be so treated. 

“These are criminal acts and they should be treated as such. Criminals should be identified, tracked, arrested and prosecuted. Crimes should be investigated and prosecuted.”

Apart from the option of holding criminals accountable, there is the issue of specific government interventions meant to keep schools safe and secure. The most prominent of them is the Safe School Initiative, which was launched with much fanfare in 2014. Many security experts believe the very reason why criminal elements target schools for abduction is because they are soft targets, which are easy to penetrate. The Safe School Initiative was to make schools less vulnerable to security. Its cardinal objective was enable schools, communities and law enforcement agencies work together to secure schools from attacks by criminal elements. Many believe the rise in the number of school adduction is an indication that the government only paid lip service. As such, the initiative, which according to its initial promoters was aimed at “building community security groups to promote safe zones for education, consisting of teachers, parents, police, community leaders and young people themselves,” soon unraveled because government did not have the will to implement it across the country. 

The talk about training, providing school guards, police, school safety officers, and providing counsellors to schools at risk of attack did not go beyond mere intentions. As one activist puts it: “To stop further attacks on schools, we believe there should be a common template for securing places of learning across the country, especially in the North. We can see that the attacks on schools take a similar pattern of groups of criminals invading the school premises. 

“Security agencies like the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps should be given the mandate to deploy to schools and complement whatever efforts the Nigeria Police has in place. Finally, it is clear that the criminals terrorising schools at the moment are part of the out of school population of yesterday. The millions of children Nigeria has failed to put in schools may be the source of criminal gangs which may terrorize society in time to come,” he said.