Parents of Afaka students: We’ve been abandoned by Kaduna government

Sani Friday, one of the parents of the abducted students of Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna, says the state government has abandoned them to their fate.

Friday, who represented the parents of the abducted students, said this on Tuesday in an interview on ‘Sunrise Daily’, a Channels Television programme.

The father of two kidnapped students said the trauma from the incident keeps worsening as the kidnappers now call individual parents to demand ransom.

He faulted the government’s refusal to negotiate and pay ransom, saying the parents can only appeal to the abductors to “create a platform where they can negotiate, and at the same time appeal to them to reduce their demands to the level we can be able to raise”.

“We the parents are worried about the situation, and we must confess that we are not happy. There is tension everywhere, most especially now that we are hearing about the killing of the students that were abducted from the Greenfield University,” he said.

“Our children have spent about 47 days in captivity, and it seems nobody is saying anything about it.

“The parents are worried. The trauma is becoming too hard on us. The kidnappers started calling us recently that they are growing out of patience, they are calling individual parents to come and pay the ransom.

“The price they are placing on each child is N5 million, if you must get your child out.

“And the government position remain the same, they have refused to change position that they will not negotiate with the bandits. This is the situation we have found ourselves.

“It is like we have been abandoned by the state government; we have been abandoned by the forestry research institute and we are still calling on them to do something.”