Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has told President Muhammadu Buhari and the Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai that the blood of the 19 Greenfield University students abducted nearly three weeks ago will be on their heads should the kidnappers be willfully allowed to make good their threat to kill off the students.

HURIWA, quoting media report said the terrorists and armed bandits threatened to kill the remaining 17 students abducted from the University, Kaduna State, while expressing consternation that the political elites have abandoned the students and simply assumed that their lives are not worth rescuing which is a crime against humanity on the part of the elected government officials who are bound by the law to prevent anarchy and lawless killings.

The rights group recalled that 22 students and a member of staff were abducted from the school campus along the Kaduna-Abuja highway on April 20 and within a week, five of them were killed. It expressed regret that President Buhari has done nothing constructive to rescue these students but has kept mute whilst the nation burns except the incongruent and incoherent press statements being issued by the Senior Special Assistant on Media, Garba Shehu.

The rights group said from every indication, the Buhari administration is not just on autopilot but seems to have existentially collapsed adding that the persons still supporting the continuous hold on political power by an incompetent President are only after what pecuniary gains they will take to their offshore accounts.

HURIWA cited an interview with the Hausa Service of Voice of America (VOA), a leader of the bandit group who identified himself as Sani Idris Jalingo, in which he said if the Kaduna State Government or their families fail to pay a ransom of N100 million as well as provide them with 10 brand Honda motorcycles by Tuesday, the remaining students will be killed. The rights group said Nigerians should take this warning as a very disturbing phenomenon which must not be allowed to be actualised.

The rights group said that the said spokesman of the terrorists revealed that there were 17 students in his custody, including 15 females and two male students among them a grandchild of the late 18th Emir of Zazzau, Shehu Idris, whom he identified as Hamza. The bandit revealed that the families of the students have already raised and paid N55 million to them but said they had used the money in feeding the students. He vowed that it was his final warning and should government or the students’ families fail to meet his demands, all the students will be killed.

Reacting to this latest warning, HURIWA said President Buhari and the Kaduna State governor have failed to protect the lives of the students only because they are not their biological children.

“If we may ask, if one of those kidnapped students is a son or daughter of President Buhari, will he continue to remain in perpetual slumber and allow Nigeria to slide into near irreversible anarchy, doom and lawlessness? If these citizens abducted for over three weeks are children of the top leaders of the All Progressive Congress (APC) or the governors, will they be this abandoned to their cruel fate?"

The group affirmed too that: "Was it not this same President Buhari who activated mechanisms to rescue the wife of the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Mrs. Emefiele within 48 hours when similar armed hijackers and kidnappers took her into captivity? Why is the President allowing the unnecessary shedding of blood of the innocent when protecting lives and property of the Nigerian citizens is his most important constitutional role of which if he is incapable of doing then the next best thing to do is to resign from office or be impeached?

“Let President Buhari and the Kaduna State governor realize that the blood of these citizens being shed unnecessarily and illegally by armed non-state actors is on their heads when the same government does nothing to arrest and prosecute the terrorists for their crimes against humanity. These students of Greenfield University must never be sacrificed on the altar of political mediocrity and impunity by President Buhari and his man-Friday, the governor of Kaduna state el-Rufai. A word is enough for the wise.”

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