A week after armed persons invaded Government Science College, Kagara, Niger State, the abducted students are yet to regain their freedom. Forty-two persons, including 27 school children, 3 staff and 12 family members of staff of the school were abducted in the early hours of Wednesday, February 17, with one student killed in the course of the attack. This incident came three days after the abduction of 21 passengers travelling from Kontagora to Minna in the State. Following the attack, the Niger State government ordered the immediate closure of boarding schools within Rafi, Mariga, Munya and Shiroro Local Government Areas of the State, until the security situation in the State improves. The State Governor, Abubakar Sani-Bello called for assistance from the Federal Government and stated that the government was making efforts to rescue the victims, including facilitating negotiations with the bandits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\nreacting to the incident, reiterated that attacks on schools and educational\nfacilities are abhorrent and unacceptable. The Nigeria representative of the United\nNations International Children\u2019s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Peter Hawkins, who\nstated that children should feel safe at home and at school at all times,\ncalled for the immediate and unconditional release of the abducted students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a related development, 53 passengers, including the\n21 passengers abducted a week ago were released on Sunday, February 21, and\nhanded over to the Niger State government. According to the State government,\nplans are underway to secure the release of the Kagara students, staff and\ntheir family members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The abduction of the school children is coming barely\ntwo months after over 300 students of Government Science Secondary School,\nKankara in Katsina State were taken hostage by gunmen. The series of unrepelled\nviolent attacks by armed gangs across the country is worrying and is indicative\nof Nigeria\u2019s deteriorating security situation. Following a debate in the Senate\non the abduction of the students in Kagara, the legislators called on President\nMuhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency on insecurity in Nigeria. The Senate\nalso called on the President to consider the report of the Ad-hoc Committee on\nNigeria Security Challenges adopted on March 17, 2020, and implement the\nresolutions stated therein, with a view to tackling the growing spate of\ninsecurity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A week after armed persons invaded Government Science College, Kagara, Niger State, the abducted students are yet to regain their freedom. Forty-two persons, including 27 school children, 3 staff and 12 family members of staff of the school were abducted in the early hours of Wednesday, February 17, with one student killed in the course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[227,228,225,229],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-21-passengers-travelling-from-kontagora-to-minna-in-the-state","tag-government-science-secondary-school","tag-insecurity-worsens","tag-kankara-in-katsina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1931,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions\/1931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}