‘No school can be safe: When jihadists attack a school, the village has to be deserted’

‘No school can be safe: When jihadists attack a school, the village has to be deserted’

Well, we’re going to talk uh more about this subject and to do that, we’re joined now on the line from Abuja in Nigeria by Isa Sanuzi who is country director of the human rights group Amnesty International for Nigeria. First of all, welcome to the program. Isa Sanuzi, thank you so much for for joining us to discuss this. We appreciate it. uh you know we heard there from our correspondent uh something about this latest uh spate of uh kidnappings. I think for people outside Nigeria it is very difficult to understand how has this phenomenon uh come about? He talked about money there. Are there multiple reasons? Is it money? Is it for child brides? Is it for ideological reasons? What’s your view from what you’ve seen? Well, uh if you look at it uh generally, you realize that the whole thing is about uh utter failure of the Nigerian authorities to protect lives, especially in the rural areas where these abductions take place. They don’t take place in the cities and the capitals and the towns. They only take place in rural areas. Vulnerable areas where there is no presence of governance, where there is no authority. Therefore, people with guns are taking advantage of the weakness of the state to perpetrate these crimes. Uh their motives are multiple and are different. Uh mostly they do it for a ransom and some do it to assert their power to show that they can do whatever they like and get away with it. And some do it particularly for girls uh to to to get them into forced uh marriage and and they even have multiple children with them at the end of the day and those who resisted are either killed or injured or disabled completely. So they have so many motives, but at the head of all this is clearly the fact that if the Nigerian government could not protect lives and they could not protect villages and and and and rural areas, it means that no school can be safe because these schools are located in communities and whenever they come and attack a school also the village has to be deserted because they may likely go come back and attack people as well. And you know, I think a lot of our viewers will remember back in 2014 when those hundreds of school girls were kidnapped from Chibbach. Uh and there was an international outcry. There was the campaign to bring back the girls. Uh many of them are still there uh in the woods in Nigeria. Some escaped. Uh some got out. Uh are you saying that since then virtually nothing has been done to improve security? Well uh things are actually deteriorating. Uh they are not getting better because if you look at it at that time in 2014 we only have one well-known uh insurgent group which is Bokh Haram. we now have like three or four other insurgent groups carrying heavy arms and operating across northern Nigeria. Therefore, things are deteriorating because if things are improving, uh there wouldn’t be uh multiplication or emergence of other new groups. And based of am based on amnesty international’s investigation, we realized that uh in the case of Chubok in 2014 and the abduction in Dchi school in Yob state in 2018, we found out that security lapses were the reasons why uh the gunmen were able to abduct these children. And uh this cannot be ruled out even now. And this shows that there is no accountability in terms of securing lives and property in Nigeria. And if this continues, uh, education will be impossible for millions and millions of children in northern Nigeria. Now, of course, uh, a couple of weeks back, Donald Trump intervened in this issue. Uh, he framed it as, uh, uh, persecution of Christians. The fact is I think that most of this as you say happens where the Islamist insurgency is in the north there are many Muslim children there. So it also there those who have just uh been uh rescued today I think were mostly Muslim children. So it does happen to both. Uh but what has his intervention? He said publicly uh that he was considering perhaps Washington intervening in Nigeria to sort this out. That seems very unlikely. But have his words had any effect on the president of Nigeria? Well, um I I will not say that uh what Donald Trump has said uh have made any impact, but it may possibly be because uh immediately after his pronouncements which were not based on facts and uh which were just uh a little bit uh or more or less exaggerated uh uh estimation of the situation in Nigeria. uh immediately after that we see multiple attacks spit of attacks uh multiplying. Uh it may not be related but uh definitely uh the reckless statement by American politicians about what is going on in Nigeria contributes a lot to creating more division and more uh uh mistrust among Nigerians. And that is one of the reasons why these armed groups are succeeding and are carrying out their activities without any hindrance across the country. Is there much that the wider world can do over this? Uh there was as I said when the Chebacc uh kidnappings happened, there was quite a big campaign. It didn’t seem to have much effect. It seems that Boohh Haram and other Islamist insurgents carry on unbothered by uh international uh disgust at these acts. Well, um you know Nigeria is a sovereign country and uh we always believe that Nigeria has the capacity and ability and resources to deal with this situation. It’s just a matter of doing the right thing at the right time. But uh despite that, we believe that uh it may not be wrong for international organizations uh to uh and countries uh foreign countries to look at the situation and help the country to overcome this uh problem. Uh it is quite clear that the government is overwhelmed because the security challenges facing the country right now are overwhelming. uh no country can be able to handle these things effectively uh no matter how resourceful it is. Therefore um it is very important that the global um nations uh pay attention to what is going on in Nigeria because it will have ripple effect on the whole of West Africa and the rest of the world because as I told you earlier we have the emergence of another insurgent group called Lakurawa in northern Nigeria. We have another one called Mammuda which have not been around in the last even 2 years. Therefore, the possibility is when this thing happen and these criminal gangs and insurgents see the opportunity that comes with abducting children they will continue to do it again and again. Right now because of this situation over 20,000 schools have been closed down and some of them may not open at all. Therefore, the the impact is very huge and I believe that the world should be paying attention to what is going on in Nigeria. I’m afraid we’re out of time now. Uh thank you so much for your time, Isa Sanusi, uh the country director there of uh the human rights group Amnesty International Director for Nigeria. Uh thank you so much uh for

The families of Papiri had long called for security forces to protect their children at the school in northern Nigeria where more than 300 pupils were kidnapped by gunmen last week, in one of the country’s worst mass abductions. They say that no one came. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective, Angela Diffley welcomes Isa Sanusi, Executive Director Amnesty International Nigeria.
#Nigeria #StudentKidnappings #AmnestyInternational

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