T-Pain finally throws muscle at cascading kidnap crisis
The president also told officers to stop focusing on VIPs and protect the children who are being abducted.
Hussain Wahab in Oyo
President Bola Tinubu declared a nationwide security emergency on Wednesday and ordered the recruitment of 20,000 additional police personnel, which will bolster forces to 50,000. Tinubu also authorised the use of National Youth Service Corps camps for training and directed officers to redeploy from guarding VIPs to conflict zones.
The measures follow the abduction of more than 300 students and 12 teachers from St Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, on Friday – one of the largest school kidnappings since Chibok in 2014. A week earlier, two dozen schoolgirls were kidnapped from a school in Kebbi State. On Monday, 11 people, including a pregnant woman, were abducted in Isapa, Kwara State.
All 24 schoolgirls kidnapped in Kebbi have since been rescued through negotiations and military pressure. Officials in Niger State say 50 of Papiri pupils have also been freed, as have all 38 abductees from a church in Kwara.
Militants and bandits see schools as soft targets for abductions. The sheer scale of ongoing nationwide attacks has forced Nigerian state governors into defensive mode. Last week, Kebbi and Niger states ordered the immediate closure of most public institutions of higher education. Zamfara and Kaduna states ordered similar shutdowns earlier.
Education experts warn the closures will have long-term costs. “Whoever opens a school door closes a prison … it implies that he who closes a school opens a prison door,” said Mahfouz Adedimeji, vice-chancellor of the African School of Economics in Abuja.