Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina State has said 333 students are yet to be accounted for as soldiers, Airforce and other security operatives are in the forest to rescue the remaining students of Government Science Secondary School Kankara who were kidnapped on Friday night.
He made this known while receiving Federal Government delegation led by the Minister of Defence, General Bashir Magashi and Service Chiefs who were in the state on a fact-finding visit on Sunday.
The governor who appreciated the delegation stated that out of a total of 839 students of the school, the government is yet to account for 333 pupils.
Masari said: “So far we are yet to account for 333 pupils and we are still counting because more are still coming out of the forest, we are calling parents of the children to find out whether their children have returned.
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“Because we discovered that so many of them had returned to their local government. But based on the records we have, we are still searching for 333 students.
“As a government, we are yet to be contacted by any group or person of the whereabouts of the children kidnapped yesterday.”
Earlier, the Minister of Defense, Gen Bashir Magashi, sympathised with the Governor, assuring him that the armed forces will move as fast as possible to get the missing students and reunite them with their families.
According to him, “We must move very fast to ensure that these students are rescued. We do this on the belief that if these people are allowed to move freely, the situation will be complicated.
“In conclusion, within the arm of security, it is high time that we declare this kind of people as terrorists if we do that probably people will now sit up,” he declared.