by Alexander O. Onukwue

It’s been fifty-six days – EIGHT WEEKS – since six students were abducted from a secondary school in Igbonla in Epe, Lagos State.

Six students of Igbonla Model College in Epe were kidnapped on the 25th of May, 2017. They have not been found or recovered, and nothing of note has been said by the Akinwumni Ambode Government of Lagos State to the effect of progress in returning them back to the school and to their parents.

The six boys who have now spent two months in the hands of unknown miscreants are the unfortunate victims of the hideous crime of kidnapping which has assumed the place of the most apparent rich quick scheme in Nigeria for the past three years.

Media reports on the nature of the kidnap late May, in which the kidnappers supposedly wrote to the school to pre-inform of their plan and the attempt by the school to notify the Police before the boys were taken from their hostel, gives this particular case an alarming smack of inefficiency in the security apparatus of Lagos State, and Nigeria by extension.

The agony that parents face when their children have been abducted cannot be wholly explained or understood, unless felt, and after fifty-six days, what has been done to alleviate the sufferings of the parents of the Igbonla six?

The parents of the six boys certainly did not commit a crime by sending their children to acquire education. It is unbecoming that parents who struggle to send their children to school would have to have their hearts in their hands on a daily basis in hope that their children will return to them.

It is to be expected that Governor Ambode and the Lagos Police Command would double their efforts in bringing this harrowing experience to an end as soon as possible, with the safe rescue of these boys from their captors.

Fifty-six days is simply too long and unacceptable for innocent children to be in the hands of who-knows-who, without the care and attention of their parents, and teachers. It is time to bring back the Igbonla boys.