Nigerian Army has on Monday December 14, confirmed that 333 students were still missing after bandits attacked Government Science Secondary School, Kankara in Katsina on Friday night.
Coordinator of Defence Media Operations, Major General John Enenche corroborated the figure earlier released by the Katsina State Government while appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
Enenche said;
The principal reported that he had 839 in the boarding house; and as at the time they were abducted, shortly after that, some came back and it was about five hundred plus that did not return.
As at 2 pm yesterday (Sunday), the students that could not be accounted for reduced to 333. Out of that 333, before I came into the studio, one escaped out of wherever they kept them.
He also gave an insight on how the students were moved from the school, saying the abductors used motorcycles to ferry the schoolchildren into the bush from where some of the students escaped.
Enenche noted;
That is their usual characteristics – those abductors. It is the same system; the same approach they used. There was no evidence, no information about them using other modes of transport.
Read Also: Katsina Students Abductors Have Contacted Us, Says Governor Masari
Speaking about update that the abductors have contacted Katsina state Government on Monday night, Enenche said;
You don’t stop whatever efforts you are putting up militarily for what we call the non-kinetic (or) the other approach. No, you don’t stop, all of them go concurrently.
For instance, if they (the students) are kept in a place that is known, if you relax, they will slip out. So, all actions are on the table to ensure that we come to a meeting point and the meeting point is to ensure that we don’t get collateral damage in our efforts to get them (the students) out.
He stressed;
The troops and other security agencies have been adequately deployed to ensure that they (the students) are rescued alive, that is the most important thing for us. And that is what we have for the general public that there is hope, we need them out alive.
