Kidnapping ruse to stop education in Northern Nigeria: MSSN

“We see kidnapping as an effort to discourage the pursuit of education in educationally backward communities in the northern parts of the country.”

News Agency of Nigeria • July 25, 2021

A photo of children in Islamiya School in Borno State used to illustrate this story (Credit: Aljezeera)

The Muslims Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN) has said that the incessant kidnapping of students in some parts of the country was a strategy to discourage the pursuit of education.

MSSN’s National President, Shehu Usman-Abubakar, said on Saturday in Birnin Kebbi, that many students had withdrawn from school as a result of the kidnapping.

He said that education was the major source of strength and power to every nation and community in the world.

“As kidnapping has started affecting schools, we, as members of MSSN, view it as an effort towards discouraging the pursuit of education, especially in educationally backward communities in the northern parts of the country.

“Therefore, more should be done to put a stop to that with all the might and urgency possible,” he said.

Mr Usman-Abubakar urged the government at all levels to do more in ensuring the protection of lives and properties of their citizens, saying that the rate of criminality in the country was alarming, especially banditry and kidnapping.

He, however, noted that security agencies had been doing a lot in combating insecurity in the country while commending the Kebbi state government for its effort in the immediate rescue of some of the kidnapped students of Federal Government College, Birnin Yauri.

“We urge other state governments affected to follow suit,” he said.

The MSSN president also urged the Muslim faithful to return to Almighty God in repentance and to prayer for a better Nigeria.

Since Nigeria first recorded the mass abduction of 276 predominantly Christian school girls from government secondary school in Chibok in April 2014, more than a dozen of such mass school kidnappings have taken place across states in the North.

Bandits and terrorists continue to abduct students at will for huge ransoms. Recently, pupils in Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, Kaduna, Niger and other northern states have been abducted. Some were later released after ransoms were paid.

Peoples Gazette on Sunday reported how bandits detained a deliveryman after pocketing N50 million contributed by parents of students abducted in an Islamic school in Regina, Niger State.