Nigeria: The family and friends of the 51 victims who were kidnapped during their Abuja-Kaduna train journey and are still in captivity have vowed to occupy major government facilities over what they called the government’s insensitivity towards the protection of its citizens.
The gunmen, popularly known as bandits in the area earlier, threatened to kill the victims if the government failed to react to their demands and just recently, one of the victims was shot.
After this shooting incident, friends and families of the victims, in a statement via their spokesperson, Dr Abdulaziz Atta, said that they were afraid of losing those who were still in captivity.
One of the family members of the victim named Atta, whose mother is still in the captivity of the bandits, revealed that they were all concerned regarding the state of health of the captives due to their age.
He said about the person who was shot that, “as it stands, there are no antibiotics, no one to remove the bullets from victim’s body, just imagine the present situation he will be suffering from.”
While admitting that the government was reacting positively, Atta further added that the process of release must be hastened as just 11 of their family members are out of harm’s way.
“We have kids, as you have heard earlier, as young as three years old, and from our feedback, these kids are alone.
“We have women who are injured, we have aged women and men, those people should be brought out”, part of the statement read.
By Tuesday next week, which will be 100 days that they have been in captive, we are preparing to do a physical protest. We will have to sit in key government facilities, and we intend to sit there till our loved ones are out. So, we are revising our strategies, we will change our strategies from the media conference, the media have been amazing to us, but now we are going to move out physically for individuals to see us on the streets, Atta said.
