By Janet Bassey (Governance Reporter)
Incensed by the current frequency of abduction of boarding school students and demand for ransom payment by bandits as a condition for their release, President Muhammadu Buhari has warned state governors to stop encouraging the kidnappers by paying for their ransom demands.
Buhari gave this advice in reaction to the latest abduction of 317 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Jangebe in Zamfara State on Friday which he described as inhumane and totally unacceptable.
The President, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, appealed to the state governments “to review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles, warning that the policy might boomerang disastrously.”
Buhari also said that his “administration will not succumb to blackmail by bandits who target innocent school students in the expectations of huge ransom payments. No criminal group can be too strong to be defeated by the government. The only thing standing between our security forces and the bandits are the rules of engagement", the President stated.
According to Buhari, the government "have the capacity to deploy massive force against the bandits in the villages where they operate, but our limitation is the fear of heavy casualties of innocent villagers and hostages who might be used as human shields by the bandits,” he said, stressing that “our primary objective is to get the hostages safe, alive and unharmed.”
Buhari however pointed out that a hostage crisis is a complex situation that "requires maximum patience in order to protect the victims from physical harm or even brutal death at the hands of their captors.”
He, therefore, warned the bandits not to live under "any illusions that they are more powerful than the government. They shouldn’t mistake our restraint for the humanitarian goals of protecting innocent lives as a weakness or a sign of fear or irresolution.”
The President tasked the governments in the states and at the local level to be more proactive by improving security around schools and their environments. NNL.