Parents of abducted Kankara schoolboys dismiss Boko Haram video

Some parents of the abducted students of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, say the video the Boko Haram sect released on their children is fake.

In a video, which went viral on social media on Thursday, some of the boys, looking distraught, appealed to the government to cooperate with their abductors so that they can be freed.

“Please help us. Tell the vigilantes and soldiers not to come around,” one of the boys in the video said, adding “more than 500 of us are in the forest,” one of the boys said.

“Close any form of school, including Islamiyah. Please send the army back. They can’t do anything to help us. Please sir, we need your assistance.”

At the end of the video, a voice believed to be that of Shekau said, “he was doing Allah’s work”.

TheCable showed the video to some of the parents but they could not identify any of the persons there.

Umar Muhammad, one of the parents, said: “This is a fake video; these are not our kids.

“Why are they pulling our legs? This video is not genuine and most of us have kids that were abducted but this video did not clearly show our children. It is just a fake and means to deceive us.”

He alleged that the abducted schoolboys were kept in Tsafe local government area of Zamfara state, which shares borders with the Kankara local government of the state.

Dini Ketare, a parent who could not fight back tears over his missing child, simply said: “The video is not of our children and does not even look like them.

“We spent six day coming here from the Ketare town, hoping to see that our children have been rescued but we always leave here in a bad mood.”