50 days abduction, 6 students, 50 days of watch dog silence

6 schoolboys go missing and there's no outrage? Unacceptable #Igbonla

Written by The Native - 15.Jul.2017

Today marks the 50th since six high school students were kidnapped in Igbonla, a city on the fringes of Lagos, somewhere close to Epe. One would easily expect that an incident of such gravity (concerning the lives of young children) will herald excessive broadcast, but even a Google search of “6 kidnapped boys in Lagos” will leave you with out-dated news articles of the day they were abducted. One would also expect that News sites and stations give constant updates of the case’ happenings and demand the return of the poor kids but half the world is left with citizen journalists and active updates from twitter users to keep updated pending their release.

The six students were taken from their school’s vicinity, Lagos State Model College. Initially, they were 10 held captive till the kidnappers asked about their parents’ occupation. Those who told them they’re orphans, have no knowledge of their parents’ phone numbers, or that they have parents as farmers, were let loose, while the remaining 6 haven’t been heard from since May 25th. The Kidnappers remain silent as well.

As more people discover the insouciance from the government and the media, they’ve begun to publicly sympathize; the sympathy snowballing into the hashtag, #Igbonla

Below are some pleas, declaration and demands by twitter users:

https://twitter.com/poabaje/status/885758881317695488

One user even tweets to popular media outlets

A user highlights that the nonchalance results from them being children of the underprivileged in the society

We may have to agree with this last tweet. But then again, with news, the death of a thousand persons in a country only heralds equal effect to the death of 10 in a small locality.

For now, we beat on: Bring back #Igbonla school boys

Feature Image Credit: Twitter/@newsnigerianna

Fisayo is a journalist who thinks writing is hard and reading too. But her journey somewhere reveals, words are like pawns on chessboard when writing. She wants to see, create and share with the world, experience & communicate these experiences. Tweet at her @fisvyo

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