President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the killing of three students of the Greenfield University in Kaduna State by bandits, describing the incident as barbaric.
The President in a statement issued on Saturday by his spokesman, Garba Shehu, said the bright youngsters were cut down by evil people in their prime.
“My thoughts are with their families in this time of grief. May their souls rest in peace,” President Buhari was quoted as saying.
He extended his condolences and that of the Federal Government to the relatives, associates of the murdered students and the Kaduna State Government.
While lamenting the recurring incidents of kidnappings and killings, President Buhari described as “unfortunate the tenor of some political and religious leaders that seem to further incite and stoke the pain and anguish of mourning families who are forced to confront these tragedies.”
“Addressing this scourge requires a great show of empathy and coming together as a society to squarely confront these elements and the danger it poses to our democracy and peaceful life in the country.”
He gave strong assurances that those who think that profits can be made, either from money paid as ransom or in politics, “will suffer from an equal measure of recompense under the full weight of the law for their wickedness and brutality.”
President Buhari also reassured his administration’s commitment to tackling the numerous security challenges in the country, noting that “Banditry, kidnapping and the politics of murders will be fought with all the resources available to our country.”
His reaction comes barely 24 hours after the three students of the Greenfield University were discovered dead.
The students were among those that were abducted by bandits from the private university located along the Kaduna- Abuja highway on April 20.
The armed bandits on Tuesday night kidnapped an unspecified number of students at the institution located at Kasarami village off Kaduna-Abuja Road in Chikun local government area of Kaduna State.
Eyewitnesses had said the gunmen stormed the university and started shooting sporadically, before taking some of the students away.
The locals said that the university with about forty students population does not have enough security on the ground, despite being located in one of the epicenters of kidnapping, a situation which they believe made it easier for the bandits to gain easy access into the institution.
In recent times, Kaduna has been facing series of attacks by bandits including assaults on schools.
On March 11, they attacked the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization Afaka in the Igabi Local Government Area of the state and kidnapped 39 students.
