The Christian Association of Nigeria is accused the national police of negligent behaviour in the aftermath of the kidnapping of some 303 schoolgirls at a boarding home in Niger state last week.
25 girls abducted in similar fashion from another boarding school days earlier.
Although 50 of those 303 students and 12 members of staff abducted from the Papiri village school had escaped and confirmed to be safe home with ther families, CAN said the police had an unfinished business to rescue the rest of those presumable still being held captive.
CAN said police handling of past abduction cases including the latest one is cause for concern and advised the security herarchy to be more robust in their response to the country’s worsening insecurity challenges. The association expressed frustration that police had a habit of arriving at the scenes of such incidents ”too late” to stop them from happening and demanded more effective security cover for the public.
These cases of abductions ostensibly by armed gangs who roam the northeast and other parts of Nigeria demanding ransom for the release of capives coincides with growing concern by the United States about what it calls the killing of Christians in the country and the supposed lack of political will to tackle it.
President Donald Trump had even warned that the United States would consider intervening militarily if the Nigerian government remains indecisive about the state of insecurity surrounding Christians.
To express this concern, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth held talks with his Nigerian counterpart last week during which a strategy was mooted on how to deal with jihadist movements sweeping across West Africa and the Sahel.
The Nigerian government has since denied that there is any state-sanctioned campaign against people of any faith and claimed the insecurity affecting the country was not focused on any religious group.
CAN said the police should be doing more to arrest the slide into ”a wanton campaign of violence allegedly directed at Christians and their schools and churches.
However the police have hit back, saying the schools where criminals gangs had targted were advised to shut down in extreme cases or urged to be improve security.
The head of the police in Niger state, Adamu Abdullahi Elleman echoed the position of the governor Umar Bago by stating that the church-run school was advised to shut down after intelligence reports warned of an immment attack on the St Mary’s school. He said such a warning was not heeded, a claim hotly disputed by the church which said it had received no such advise from the police.
Federal police chief Kayode Egbetokun has promised to strengthen ongoing operations in pursuit of the kidnappers to free the rest of the hostages.
In a statement he said the police ”are ready to give everything to ensure that the remaining pupils and their teachers still in captivity are rescued unhurt,” he said.
President Bola Tinubu apparently seized of the matter opted out of last weekend’s G20 summit in South Africa to order more police numbers to deal with the spate of kidnappings in Nigeria, the last of which was the third in a week.
WN/as/APA