0
While the recent kidnap of more than thirty school children and about seven teachers from a school in Oyo State, as well as the commensurate abduction, also of school children, in Borno may have taken the path of previous ones with Nigerians seemingly and abysmally moving on, the heightened fear among the citizens is hinged on their safe rescue.
Daily Independent gathered that apart from the beheading of one of the teachers in the forest, there are unconfirmed fatalities, particularly among the younger ones who have had to endure very nasty situations, with the deadly gun-wielding abductors threatening their lives.
The trauma of facing the criminals, with attendant threats of elimination, analysts posit, is a reality that would continue to haunt the children and their obviously frightened teachers.
Beneath the hue and cry around the country on the seeming negligence of the authorities in fast-tracking the safe release of the captives, our correspondent gathered that efforts (though with emphasis on the safety of the victims) are being made to ensure their safe release.
A security source who spoke to our reporter on anonymity said the fear had been the fate of the captives given various measures already in place.
“Things are being worked out as we speak; this is a security issue and the military is aware that politicising certain things will endanger the lives of those in captivity,” he said.
“Information has it that so many groups want to help but we are talking of the lives of the children here. If we allow that, those children may be killed. The opposition parties are taking advantage of this situation but they forget they are putting the lives of the captives in danger,” said the source, a military officer based in Lagos.
He explained that it was a deliberate decision to stop Yoruba agitator, Sunday Igboho, and Amotekun Network from any rescue operation because of the lives of the children.
“Remember Sunday Igboho wanted approval to mobilise but he was stopped immediately,” he said.
“Any of such would have endangered the lives of the captives. We gathered that the criminals are already using them as shields, placing them at the corners of their hideouts.
“So any attack on them will affect the children but I want to tell you that they will soon be freed as the military and the police are not relaxing,” said the Brigadier General.
To underline the sensitivity of the operations towards freeing them, days ago, Rachael Alamu, the principal of the affected school, in a video shared by the terrorists, pleaded with the government not to even deploy the military, arguing that such would compound their problem. She rather appealed that the government should engage the abductors in a dialogue.
“We learned that yesterday some army was sent, and that has compounded our problems. It has added to our troubles,” she said in the video.
“We are pleading with you not to force yourself into the bush, but please call them and dialogue with them so that the problem can be solved, and we will be able to go home alive,” she said.
Instances abound where terrorists either kill their victims or use them as shields after they suspect attacks from the government.
For instance, about a week ago, terror groups in Mali, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Tuareg dominated separatist Front de Libération de l’Azawad (FLA), launched an attack in the villages of Korikori and Gomossogou in Mopti region, where scored were killed.
According to a report by the BBC, the death toll later reached 50 as the jihadists fully claimed responsibility for the attack that remains one of the deadliest to have happened in the country. The coordinated attacks shook the country as such a level of fatality has hardly happened before.
However, WAMAPS, (short for West Africa Maps), a network of West African journalists specialising in Sahel security, as per local media, revealed that the attack was a reprisal from the insurgents after they suspected that the affected communities aided the government in a previous attack that affected their hideouts.
The group reported that the jihadists said their anger for the mass killing was because the locals had earlier connived with the government to attack them, a development that triggered their anger. WAMAPS noted that investigation revealed hitherto secret but later exposed assistance of the natives to the government troops through intelligence gathering and accommodation, a situation that exposed the terrorists to attacks from the troops.
It was also reported that the affected villages allegedly mobilised to attack their hideouts, leading to the reprisals which left more than fifty persons dead and scores seriously injured. According to Amnesty International, the casualties may eventually be far more than the reported figure given the extent of the injuries sustained.
Globally, terrorists use their victims as baits when confronting the government. They frequently use victims as human shields during attacks or kidnappings to deter military intervention, complicate rescue operations and exploit civilian casualties for propaganda.
Because professional personnel and law enforcement prioritise saving lives, placing captives in the line of fire intentionally slows down counter-offensives and forces authorities to negotiate. And when individuals attempt to embark on missions that the armed groups deem threatening to their safety, they would resort to placing their captives at the front as the first line of casualties in the event of attacks from trained government personnel.
For example, after the October 7, 2023 attacks by the Israeli forces in the ongoing war in the Middle East, intelligence reports and independent monitoring noted that Hamas systematically moved Israeli civilian hostages above ground into highly volatile neighborhoods, private homes, and temporary tents. This was done specifically to deter the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from conducting further localised ground or aerial operations.
Also, international human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and Amnesty International documented that Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) also engaged in such acts
According to B’Tselem, IDF soldiers put Palestinian civilians in front of them or otherwise put civilians in the line of fire and force Palestinians to remove suspicious objects (possible explosives). IDF soldiers also reportedly forced Palestinian civilians to walk through suspected booby-trapped buildings.
In the case of Oyo State, our correspondent gathered that information related to the actual location of the kidnappers and their victims had been discovered with efforts being made to free the captives.
However, as the source lamented, the main priority is to ensure the safe release of the children and their teachers.
This is the reason both the opposition political parties and individuals should understand the severity of the task at hand and shouldn’t engage in discussions, actions or gestures that could trigger the deaths of the captives.