Rights Group Asks Osinbajo to Rescue Kidnapped Lagos Students

• Laments failure of IG, DSS to act
Gboyega Akinsanmi
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) on Tuesday asked the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to personally direct all the heads of security agencies to rescue the six students kidnapped at Lagos State Model College, Igbonla, Epe on May 25.

 HURIWA, a human rights group, accused the acting president of gross insensitivity and nonchalance to the plight of the students, who had been in the captivity of their abductors for over 50 days.

 The group expressed the concern yesterday in a statement its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director, Ms Zanaib Yusuf, signed calling for Osinbajo’s intervention.

The group lamented that the acting president was seen celebrating his wife’s golden jubilee and attending high society wedding of the daughter of the Ogun State Governor and the son of a presidential aide, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, when such national calamity was yet to be resolved.

 It also lamented that the Inspector General of Police (IG), Mr. Ibrahim Idris and Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Alhaji Lawal Musa Daura, have failed to unravel those behind the abduction of the students.
It added that it was widely reported that the parents of the kidnapped students “have been cajoled by the hoodlums to part with over N30 million and yet their children are not freed.

 “The security forces especially the Nigeria police force right under the command and control of the Presidency have spectacularly failed to rescue these unfortunate Nigerian school boys whose parents have coughed out over 30 million naira ransom without seeing their children.

“This is a serious dent on the international image of Nigeria which has rapidly pushed Nigeria up into the top 20 most dangerous places on the planet earth. It is the greatest embarrassment of the decade that armed kidnappers in Lagos have on more than one occasion breached the security of schools and kidnaped hapless children of poor Nigerians.”
Despite the ugly trend of armed kidnapping, the group lamented that the police and other security services “have not jointly embarked on covert operation to rescue these boys.”

It lamented that the same security forces sprang up and deployed intelligence team to rescue the wife of the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) when she was kidnapped in Edo State.
The rights group therefore, charged the acting president “to personally direct that all the security heads in Nigeria must ensure the immediate release of these school boys.”

 It equally urged that the acting president “to also ensure that Nigeria establishes a national anti-kidnapping security joint task force to be composed of operatives and officers drawn from the crack teams of all the security forces in Nigeria because of the diverse effects of kidnapping which discourages foreign direct investors from coming to Nigeria.

 “It is unbecoming that the federal and state governments will fail to discharge the primary constitutional obligation of providing security of lives and property of Nigerians and yet the political class go about with hundreds of armed security forces and letting armed kidnappers to have field days kidnapping helpless citizens,” the group said.