President Muhammadu Buhari has described as a national disaster the abduction of students of Government Girls Technical College, Dapchi,Yobe State by suspected Boko Haram insurgents.
In press statement issued in Abuja Friday, Buhari said “President “The entire country stands as one with the girls’ families, the government and the people of Yobe State.”
Buhari said “We are sorry that this could have happened and share your pain. We pray that our gallant armed forces will locate and safely return your missing family members.”
According to him,“When I received the devastating news of the attack on the school and the fact that the local authorities could not account for all the students, I immediately dispatched a high-level delegation on a fact-finding visit to the town.
I also instructed the security agencies to deploy in full and not spare any effort to ensure that all the girls are returned safely, and the attackers arrested and made to face justice.”
“Our government is sending more troops and surveillance aircraft to keep an eye on all movements in the entire territory on a 24-hour basis, in the hope that all the missing girls will be found,” he stated.
However, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) led Federal Government of lying to Nigerians on the security situation in the country, leading to the abduction of another unconfirmed numbers of school girls in Yobe state.
The party on Friday in a statement signed by Kola Ologbondiyan, its National Publicity Secretary frowned at the controversy surrounding the kidnap of several students in the school.
The PDP claimed: “They also alleged that the Presidency has put Nigerians at risk by “deceiving the people and issuing false performance indices,” suggesting that insurgents have been completely routed out, a situation they claimed made the citizens “trust a lie and dropped their guards.”
“Without a doubt, if the incompetent APC-led government had not dished out lies to the people in a bid to score cheap political points for its ill-lucked 2019 re-election bid, more precautionary measures would have been adopted by the affected communities to ensure adequate protection,” the opposition party added.
The PDP condoled with the parents of the abducted girls and urged the security agencies to take “very decisive professional steps” to rescue the girls.
Though Abdulmaliki Sumonu, the Police Commissioner in Yobe, Wednesday confirmed that 111 girls were still unaccounted for, parents said Thursday 105 are still missing.
