Teachers in northeastern Nigeria march in Maiduguri demanding the release of 42 abducted schoolchildren in Borno State and stronger school protection.
Al Jazeera’s Felix Nyawara reports.
Over 400 women and children have been held captive in Gwoza, Borno State, for over a month now, yet there has been no information or response from the presidency
Where are the names of the Borno children??? Nobody in Borno can provide us the names and details of these kids? Nobody can take up that initiative to help us immortalize these children in the minds of the people?? Not a single soul in the whole of Borno can do that for them????
In Zamfara, bandits gave captives knives and forced them to fight and kill one another. If they refused, the bandits killed them themselves.
There was also a village where 38 hostages were brutally slaughtered after the full ransom demanded was not paid.
These are daily realities in communities grappling with the menace of kidnapping and banditry.
So all this while, when we were screaming and shouting about the kidnappings and killings of innocent people in Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and other parts of Northern Nigeria, many people treated it as a Northern problem. Now I’m seeing comments suggesting that people kept mute because they thought it will remain here.
The truth is that injustice does not remain confined to one region. When the loss of innocent lives is ignored because it is happening somewhere else, we create a culture of silence that eventually affects everyone.