President Muhammadu Buhari, on Saturday directed the deployment by the military and other security agencies of the “fiercest show of legitimate force against perpetrators” of the killing of three of the abducted students of Greenfield University, Kaduna State.
President Buhari, while denouncing the abduction and killings, described the students as bright youngsters who were cut down by evil people in their prime.
“My thoughts are with their families in this time of grief. May their souls rest in peace,” said the President.
Buhari, in a statement by Presidential Spokesperson, Garba Shehu, extended his condolences and that of the Federal Government to the relatives, associates of the murdered students and the Kaduna State government.
On the recurring incidents of kidnappings and killings in Kaduna State in particular, the President condemned them as “barbaric terror attacks,” and described as “unfortunate the tenor of some political and religious leaders that seem to further incite and stoke the pain and anguish of mourning families who are forced to confront these tragedies.”
The spate of violence in Kaduna and across the States in the country have been unprecedented in the last one week, with six killed in Ekiti on April 20; 40 kidnapped at Greenfield University, Kaduna on April 21; 18 kidnapped in Oyo on April 22; 45 killed in Zamfara on April 22, 83 killed in Zamfara on April 23 and three killed from the students abducted from Greenfield University, Kaduna on April 24.
President Buhari said that addressing the scourge of kidnapping and killings “requires great show of empathy and coming together as a society to squarely confront these elements and the danger it poses to our democracy and peaceful life in the country.”
As in the past incidents, the President gave strong assurances that those who think that profits can be made, either from money paid as ransom or in politics, “will suffer with equal measure of recompense under the full weight of the law for their wickedness and brutality.
“Banditry, kidnapping and the politics of murders will be fought with all the resources available to our country.”
