By John Ikani
The Federal Government has explained its decision to cease all negotiations with bandits and kidnappers, stressing that ransoms are used to procure arms.
Minster of State for Education, Chief Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, gave the explanation on Wednesday while responding to questions from State House Correspondents after the week’s virtual Federal Executive Council (FEC) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He was responding to a question on what the government was doing over the video that went viral where some of the kidnapped students in Kaduna State were being tortured by their abductors.
The minister who reassured Nigerians that efforts were being made to rescue the children, said negotiations had to stop because it’s been established that ransom payment was fueling and escalating insecurity in the country.
According to him, “Truly speaking, it is disheartening anytime any of our students are taken at any point, I can assure you that the federal government is doing all that it can. We have held several meetings with our security personnel and that whole region.
“Insecurity at the school level, you may understand, stems from insecurity around the area. Before we had Chibok, there was Boko Haram in the area. It is the success of the military in more or less incapacitating Boko Haram in the North-East that led to some level of insurgents in the North-West.
“We are constrained to stop negotiations with bandits because we’ve seen that every time they get any payment, it leads to further escalation, because they rearm and they go back.”
He assured Nigerians that as distressing as it was, government was on top of the matter and would keep doing all it could do free the kidnapped children, as well as keep other students safe.
