The Kaduna Students Wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups has threatened to embark on a mass action over the 18 Zaria Local Government staff who were kidnapped on Monday, noting that most of the victims are parents of their fellow students.
The students’ threat was contained in a statement issued by the Kaduna State Coordinator, Jamilu Musa, in which they threatened to embark on a mass action to shut down Zaria, Kaduna State’s second-biggest city, if the government failed to take action to secure their release within a week.
They declared that “it is unfortunate that so far, our Governments, both federal and state have glaringly failed in the vital area of providing public safety and security of lives and properties of Nigerians”.
According to the students, “the audacity with which these criminals carry out their atrocities with ease on what they called huge vacuum in the political will and capacity of the authorities to challenge them.”
Kaduna currently has several kidnap victims who are held by their kidnappers within the state.
“The CNG Students Wing notes with utter perplexity and dismay the emerging trend of abandoning innocent citizens, particularly students and their parents to the mercy of the kidnappers without any sense of emergency from the authorities,” the students noted.
“We particularly note that among the kidnapped women of Zaria Local Government are several mothers of many of our fellow students in various institutions.”
“While we feel the pain of the families, friends and relations of the kidnapped members of staff, we demand immediate action from the relevant authorities for their release, alive and safe and for government to demonstrate more commitment to the protection of citizens’ lives and properties.
“We wish to categorically state that enough is enough and students of Northern Nigeria are no longer going to be disposed to sitting idly while the sanctity of the lives of their fellow students and their parents are infringed with impunity.”
“We finally place the authorities on notice that failure to take visible and concrete action towards the safe rescue of all the parents and students involved in this latest incident and all others in captivity within the next one week would attract a mass action to shut down Zaria and compel positive action,” the statement said.
