Kankara School Abduction: Group threatens to occupy Katsina streets if schoolboys are not released

Forty-eight hours after bandits invaded the Government Secondary Science School Kankara, Katsina State, authorities are yet to disclose the exact number of students that were abducted.

The daring attack which happened the same day President Muhammadu Buhari arrived in Katsina, his home state, has elicited outrage with some youth groups threatening to occupy the city if nothing is done to ensure the immediate release of the students.

After Friday’s attack on Government Science Secondary School Katsina, the school authority and security agencies in Katsina State had promised to provide an accurate headcount of all the missing students.

On Saturday, the government ordered the closure of all boarding schools in the state, a decision that may have only further enraged indigenes of the state.

The Katsina State chapter of the coalition of northern groups on Sunday described the situation as unfortunate.

Katsina State has been heavily terrorized by bandits in recent years.

In 2019, the District Head of the President’s hometown of Daura, Musa Umar, was kidnapped. Several farming communities have also been displaced while others are reported to be paying taxes to bandits

An influential native of the state and former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, Prof Usman Yusuf, recently claimed that a third of Katsina is under bandit control while most parts of the capital have become home to Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.

In 2016, the Katsina State Government went into a peace deal with the bandits, but in June 2020, the state government announced that it is pulling out because the bandits failed to keep to their own side of the agreement.

The recent school attack has only confirmed that the situation is getting out of control.

The youth group said that the President has failed in his primary responsibility of protecting the lives and properties of the people.

It also expressed disappointment over the President’s failure to visit the school, days after the incident despite being personally present in the state.

Also Read: Hours after Buhari arrives in Katsina, terrorists welcome him with attack on school, 600 missing

The youths are demanding immediate deployment of well-equipped security operatives to all schools in the state.