Parents of Nigeria kidnap victims plead for government help

By Libby George and Bosan Yakusak
KADUNA, Nigeria April 29 (Reuters) - When Linda Peter last
spoke to her daughter, the brief phone call left her relieved
the teenager was alive but distraught because she could not pay
any ransom demanded.
Peter's 18-year-old daughter, Jennifer, was among 39
students abducted by gunmen on March 11 from a forestry college
in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna. The captors, who
called from the teenager's phone, threatened to kill the male
captives and force females into marriage, but did not specify
the ransom sum sought.
"The government is not doing anything to help these
children," said Peter, a widow and mother of five who sells
vegetables for a living but has not worked since her daughter
was taken. "We don't have anything," she said.
Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai has repeatedly said his state
government will not negotiate with "bandits", as the marauding
criminal gangs are known, or pay ransoms.
Kidnapping for ransom has become an industry in restive
northern Nigerian states where over 700 people have been
abducted at education institutions since December. President
Muhammadu Buhari in February told state governments that
"rewarding" such crimes with money and vehicles, could
"boomerang disastrously". Peter, faced with the prospect of losing her daughter, said
the government must do more to free the students.
"I'm angry with them," she said through tears of the Kaduna
government, at a meeting of relatives whose loved ones were
taken in the same raid.
Kaduna state's security commissioner, responding to the
comments, referred Reuters to an April 16 statement.
"The governor will continue to work hard until banditry is
contained, without succumbing to emotional blackmail and gradual
politicization of the unfortunate situation," it said.
Much of the fear felt by Peter and other worried parents at
the meeting, held on Wednesday, stems from the killing of five
students who were among around 17 people kidnapped on April 21
from Greenfield University, elsewhere in the state. Catherine Saleh, whose 29-year-old son Stephen Shuani was
taken from the forestry college, said she too had received calls
from the kidnappers, initially demanding 500 million naira
($1.31 million) – an unattainable sum for the teacher with a
100,000 naira monthly salary - before reducing that to 50
million.
"We cannot raise that money," she said. "If I had the money,
I wouldn't send my child to that school."
The men purporting to be the captors told her to call
government officials to demand they negotiate with them, but she
does not know anyone to contact.
"These children are between life and death. They can shoot
them at any time," Saleh said.
On the same day as the meeting, Dorathy Yohanna, one of the
dead Greenfield students, was buried.
Her father, Yohanna Meck, said he hoped state officials
would learn from the tragedy.
"Government should be proactive, they should not just keep
quiet," he told reporters after the funeral. "They should be
proactive to help the situation because it's getting out of
hand."

($1 = 380.55 naira)