UN chief demands immediate release of 317 teenagers kidnapped in Nigeria

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, on Friday demanded the immediate release of more than 300 students kidnapped in Nigeriasaid his spokesperson. “The secretary general condemns (the kidnapping) in the strongest terms and demands his immediate and unconditional release,” Stéphane Dujarric said at a press conference.

For his part, Nigerian President Muhamadu Buhari condemned the kidnapping and assured that his government “will not give in to blackmail”. “This administration will not succumb to the blackmail of bandits who attack innocent students in the hope of paying huge ransoms.”, the president said in a statement.

A total of 317 female students were kidnapped last morning from a public girls’ school in northwest Nigeria, confirmed on Friday. The police, who activated a device, in collaboration with the army, to rescue the students.

The kidnapping took place in the Government science secondary school in Jangebe town, in the northwestern state of Zamfara, after gunmen attacked the center.

“The joint efforts of the police and other security agencies will lead to the successful rescue of the students,” state police spokesman Mohammed Shehu said in a statement, urging parents to remain “calm.”

The group of armed men stormed the school on one in the morning, according to anonymous statements by a college member to the local newspaper The punch, and began forcibly transferring female students to Toyota Hilux vehicles and motorcycles.

“When they got to school We thought it was the security personnel, but our greatest fear and dismay was confirmed when they started taking the girls away.», A detailed this source, which confirmed that some of the attackers carried fake uniforms.

A school employee, who spoke to the Nigeria News Agency (NAN) on condition of anonymity, he encrypted “Hundreds” of assailants, who “invaded the city” and “sporadically shot in the air to frighten the residents before entering the school”.

The kidnapping generated demonstrations of rejection, such as that of the activist defender of women’s rights Josephine “Joe” Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin, who told EFE that “the abduction of around 300 school-age girls” represents “a purely terrorist act”.

The representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, said he was “angry and saddened by another brutal attack on schoolchildren in Nigeria”, which is “a flagrant violation of children’s rights”.

“We strongly condemn the attack and call on those responsible to release the girls immediately and that the government take action to ensure their safe release and the safety of all other school children in Nigeria, ”Hawkins concluded.

A “BAD MEMORY” OF THE CHIBOCK GIRLS

The Zamfara event happened nine days after the kidnapping by armed men 28 students and several professors from the School of Governmental Sciences of Kagara, in the western state of Niger, which was also guarded by security agents.

December 11 344 students were also abducted from a school in Kankara, in the state of Katsina (north-west), for which the responsibility was claimed by the jihadist group Boko Haram, which until then had been limited to attacking in the north-east of the country, although the authorities accused the bandits.

These students were located and released a week later, after a quick response from security forces, in a forest in neighboring Zamfara state, where the latest kidnapping has now taken place.

These violent actions are, according to Okei-Odumakin, “bad memory of the unforgettable kidnapping” of 276 students in a school in the city of Chibok (northeast), of which more than 100 are still missing, during a Boko Haram attack which shocked Nigeria and traveled around the world.

“These attacks on schoolchildren, especially girls, aim to demoralize not only girls but also boys in the North in terms of access to education.”, underlined the activist.

“To advance, the Government must renew its commitment to face the threat of terrorism, which is no longer directed against our territorial integrity, but against the lives of all, including innocent children ”, agregó Okei-Odumakin.

Boko Haram was created in 2002 in Maiduguri (capital of the northeastern state of Borno) by the spiritual leader Mohamed Yusuf to denounce the abandonment of the north of the country by the authorities.

At the time, he was leading attacks on Nigerian police, representing the state, but since Yusuf was killed by agents in 2009, the group has entered a spiral of radicalization.

Since then, northeastern Nigeria has been plunged into a state of violence caused by Boko Haram., which seeks to impose an Islamic state in this predominantly Muslim country in the north and predominantly Christian in the south. The jihadist group has killed more than 27,000 civilians and it has caused around two million displaced people, according to the UN.

With information from AFP and EFE

KEEP READING: