Former Kaduna central Senator, Shehu Sani, has knocked Presidency for disagreeing with Katsina State Governor over actual figures of missing schoolboys.
Sani wonders why arguments over the actual numbers of the boys still in captivity is so important than the lives of the missing boys.
Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, had disagreed with Katsina State Governor, Bello Masari, over the number of boys abducted from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State.
Shehu said the number of the schoolboys still in captivity based on the testimony of one of the boys who escaped are ten, not 333 as earlier reported by the governor.
Masari, on Sunday, while briefing a Federal Government delegation led by Minister of Defence, Maj Gen Bashir Magashi (retd.), had said, “The children so far kidnapped cut across the state because of the boarding school houses all children from all parts of the state and some even from outside the state.
“It has a population of 839, and so far, we are yet to account for 333 students. We are still counting because more are coming out from the forest and we are calling those parents that have phone numbers to find out whether or not their children have gone back home.”
However, BBC Hausa Service, in a bulletin on Sunday, quoted Shehu as saying only ten boys are with the bandits.
The BBC Hausa bulletin read, “The Government of Nigeria has said its security forces have surrounded the location where gunmen have kept schoolchildren abducted from a secondary school in Katsina State.
“Spokesman for the President, Mallam Garba Shehu told the BBC only ten children were remaining in the hands of the gunmen according to their colleagues who escaped from the gunmen.
The confusion has now sparked reactions from Nigerians on social media.
Shehu Sani on his Twitter page condemned the reports of conflicting numbers, saying the incident calls for empathy and action, no matter the numbers.
Sani noted that it was still a failure of duty to protect, even if just one person was kidnapped.
His tweet read: “Whenever people are killed or kidnapped, next comes disagreements in figures of the casualties or victims.
“Even if it’s one, it is still a tragedy resulting from the failure of duty to protect or prevent; And that calls for empathy and action.”
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