Abductors of Lagos school girls evade police, move girls to another location

About 15 gunmen, on Monday at 8pm, scaled the low fence of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary School, Ikorodu, Lagos, stormed a classroom where some pupils were studying for examinations and abducted three of them.

Indications emerged on Saturday that the kidnappers of the three female pupils have relocated them.

SUNDAY PUNCH gathered from a reliable police source that activities of the kidnappers, which were hitherto felt around the creeks in Epe and Ikorodu areas of the state, had ceased, suggesting that the bandits had relocated their captors to another location.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said security agents were notwithstanding focusing their search onother riverine areas within and outside Lagos.

“There is likelihood that the kidnappers have relocated the girls from Epe and Ikorodu creeks.

Those were the areas we had earlier traced their movements to but we can no longer feel their presence there. We are now going to look inwards and I believe we are going to succeed in rescuing the pupils safely soon,” the source said.

Attempts by the school security guards and male pupils to foil the abduction on the fateful day failed as the bandits escaped through the fence with the girls said to be in senior class.

In another vein, parents of the abducted schoolgirls on Saturday expressed anxiety over the safety of their children who have been in the den of kidnappers for six days.

It was learnt that some of the parents urged the school authorities to hasten negotiation with the kidnappers who were reportedly insisting on N10m ransom.

It was reported that the team of Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, had taken over the rescue mission with the Lagos State Police Command providing a back up.

When contacted the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Dolapo Badmos was silent on the development but told SUNDAY PUNCH that there was progress on the operation and assured Nigerians that the pupils would be rescued “very soon.”

Asked how ‘soon’ Nigerians should expect the release of the girls since she used the same expression in a telephone conversation with one of our correspondents on Friday in response to the matter, the PPRO said, “very, very soon they will be rescued.”

“I cannot say more than that. What is paramount to us for now is getting those schoolgirls back. We have made some developments but operation is still ongoing,” she added.