Parents of the kidnapped students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna State have expressed their exasperation over the demand of N500m ransom by the kidnappers for the remaining children to be released.
The gunmen stormed the Forestry School on March 11, 2021, and abducted 29 students, both male and female. After several days, they released 10 of them in two batches, with the other remaining in captivity since then.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday in Kaduna, the parents said they had lost hope in the government’s intervention in the release of the children.
Mr. Friday Sani, a spokesperson for the parents, said the gunmen had started calling them personally requesting ransom totaling N500million for the release of the students
“The condition we are in today is very pathetic, and we are calling on the entire world to come to our aid. We held a protest and the Kaduna State Government called us, thinking they were going to give us hope that they will rescue our children. But they told us that anybody caught negotiating with bandits will be prosecuted,” Sani said.
“That also led to our second coming out to address the world through the media that it will be better for us to be arrested, even though we have already been arrested emotionally since our children’s abduction.”
“We are already under the arrest of Government, some of us could not eat and sleep while some of us have developed sickness, so there is no arrest higher than this,” Sani lamented.
“We will continue to protest, no matter the number of security forces, the highest is death and we are ready to sacrifice that for our children who have promising futures”, he said.
Sani said that “if we can negotiate for the release of our children and succeed and then be arrested afterward, we will be the happiest people. It is better for us to be in government’s detention rather than allow our children to die”.
“The fate of our children is what we don’t know and that is the problem we have, the government has kept silent since the release of ten of the children.
“Maybe it is because we are no longer talking and pleaded with not to address the media and protest on the street. The government has remained quiet about our abducted children. We wouldn’t mind if the government take credit for the release of the ten students, be it as it may be, we want them to enable the release of others so that we can applaud them the more.”
“The government may turn Kaduna into Dubai but if there are no people to benefit from it, then it is a waste of resources. People are not secure, the stories of daily incidents of killings, kidnappings and other forms of crime are disheartening.” “We are pleading with the Government to ensure our children do not lose their lives during the course of any action they want to use in securing the release of our children, however their silence”
