Nasir El-Rufai, The Kaduna State Governor have been called on by parents of the 39 abducted students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization to negotiate with the bandits to secure the release of their wards.
The parents expressed their worries with their children spending two weeks in their kidnappers den after they were abducted in their hostels.
A staff of the school and a representative of the affected parents, Sani Friday, while speaking on Channels TV on Thursday said the parents are afraid bandits may kill their children if the government deploy force.
The affected parent, whose two daughters were amongst the abducted students pleaded with El-Rufai to adjust his no-payment-of-ransom stance to facilitate the release of the students.
He said, “It is this state governor who sometimes ago told the entire Kaduna State that if it costs him to pay bandits to stop killing citizens of Kaduna State, he will pay them.”
“Now, the state government came out even before the abduction of our students in the Federal College of Forestry that it is wrong to negotiate with bandits and that he is not going to negotiate.”
“After that statement, this incident happened and it is based on that statement that the government is standing that it will not negotiate.
But the governor made a statement before that he can do anything for the bandits to stop killing, so we want him to do something.”
“One of the fears we have is that if the government feels that they can use force to bring out this children, it will be very disastrous because these bandits are well-equipped, they may decide to eliminate the children if they discover that the government is trying to use aggressive force on them because our children are being used as shields.”
“The first way we want the government to go about this is to negotiate even if they want to put any other security measure on ground, it should be after the negotiation.”
