Buhari speaks on Kaduna house of 'slave' where 300 boys were found

President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the detention and dehumanisation of about 300 boys and men found in a building at Rigasa, Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

The police had raided the building, rescued about 300 victims and arrested seven teachers of the Islamic centre, including its proprietor, Mallam Ismaila Abubakar, who insisted he did nothing wrong than teach the detainees Islam.

But some of the victims as young as five years old said they had been held captive for years. They said they were tortured, s3xually abused and starved. Many of them, with visible injuries, had metal chains around their ankles.

The Presidency while reacting to the incident in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr Garba Shehu said;

“We are glad that the Muslim authorities have dismissed the notion of the embarrassing and horrifying spectacle as an Islamic school.

“The place has indeed been described as a house of torture and a place of human slavery.

“The President holds the view that children will be safeguarded from roaming the streets and protected from all evil influences that assail idle hands and minds when they are sent to school.

“When he inaugurated the National Economic Council for the year 2019/2023 at the Presidential Villa, in Abuja, President Buhari warned that keeping children away from school was a criminal offence.

“He also stressed the need to take seriously and enforce the statutory provisions on free and compulsory basic education, citing Section 18(3) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, which he said placed on all of us (public leaders and political office holders) an obligation to eradicate illiteracy and provide free and compulsory education.

“He added that Section 2 of the Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Act provides that every government in Nigeria shall provide free, compulsory and universal basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age.

“It is indeed a crime, he stressed, for any parent to keep their pupil child out of school for this period.

“While the government at the centre has introduced a number of programmes, including the school feeding programme, which is now in 32 states in the country, with 9.8 million children beneficiaries to encourage school enrolment and enhance the health and learning capabilities of pupils, state and local governments are obliged under the law to ensure that every child of school age goes to school throughout the crucial nine years of basic education.

“To stop unwanted cultural practices that amount to the abuse of children, our religious and traditional authorities must work with the federal, state and local governments to expose and stop all types of abuse that are widely known but ignored for many years by our communities.”