47 days no trace: Can it be true Ahoro-Esinele/Yawota abductees moved out?

47 days no trace: Can it be true Ahoro-Esinele/Yawota abductees moved out?

Khalid ABRAHAM

It is some 47 days today, July 1, that the daredevil bandits “stole” our kindreds, 46 in number made up of 39 pupils/students and 7 teachers, from their legitimate work and endeavour in Oriire local government area of Oyo state.

Gradually, the days are counting and no trace of them. Governments and security agencies at different levels assured several times that the victims including a two-year old would be returned safely. Visits by the Oyo state governor, a powerful delegation of President Bola Tinubu and the top hierarchy of the Police all promised their safe rescue.

But 47 days have passed already without any breakthrough. Hundreds of security agents have been deployed there including non-conventional operatives. Chief Sunday Adeyemo a.k.a. Sunday Igboho, is also reported to have joined the rescue operation with his team since about one week ago yet no silver lining seems to have appeared.

A matter thought will be easily resolved has now escalated to the point of losing hope. The second day of the abduction the Oyo state government announced the bandits and the abductees were located and trapped during an operation that led to the death of some operatives through use of IEDs by the bandits. Only recently too the governor said some soldiers were wounded (or is it they died that His Excellency said?) during confrontation with the assailants.

But for about a week now, everything has been quiet again, raising concerns if the claim by Sowore that the bandits and the abductees have been flown to a northern state is true. A member of the security agents in the frontline also reportedly told some people that they actually saw a copter landing but didn’t know its mission at about the time.

Why have the target been so elusive? Today, they wounded and killed security agents, but tomorrow, their whereabouts is unknown, were they allowed to slip away during the confrontations that led to their inflicting harm on the security agents? What manner of operation is that? What ingenuity is embedded in that? Are heroes in the mould of the Benjamin Adekunles now lacking among our security agents, those who will perform extraordinarily to demobilize the criminals?

Really, this haphazard nature of the mission is giving affirmation to Omoyele Sowore’s claim. Are we being taken for a ride, hoping some day we will forget, a mood already setting in. Though the police have debunked the likelihood of that. Pray it be like that.

Who is really in charge of the rescue, the state or federal government? If truly the “contingents” have been moved out of the Old Oyo National Park, then, it gives vim to the insinuation that terrorism in Nigeria has the backing of governments.

Other scenarios actually paint this picture: dubbing arrested bandits repentant and subsequently enlisting them in the army, awarding millions of naira to “repentant” terrorists, sending terrorists to Mecca for Hajj, and so on.

The federal government is proving it actually has a hand in the saga, just as some state governments in northern Nigeria are complicit. It is no wonder our gallant soldiers are often at the mercy of the bandits. One bandit leader, is it Kachalla or Machalla, yesterday boasted gleefully that the soldiers sent to attack his camp “are my boys, l have informants in the army.” Truly, troops are ambushed, killed heartlessly, terrorists stroll into barracks as they like even to commit atrocities as killing. It is an indication the security forces are infiltrated.

It is inexplicable why such would be happening, the only explanation is complicity of the government and the top echelon of the security forces. Don’t we have patriots again?

l hope therefore that government has not played a fast one by giving leeway to their “pampered insurgents” to escape with their “loots” in Oriire. I pray it is not so. One thing however is that Yorubaland, moreover Ogbomoso, can’t be a killing ground for some “uncircumcised” terrorists to perpetrate their thing. When driven to the wall the dogs of war will spring up to bury them.

All those yanmoyanmo in the north can’t endure here.