Emotions High, Hope Alive After St Mary Catholic School Abduction

Samaila Livinus has kept his grief locked inside — trying hard to be strong while awaiting news about his five-year-old son, who is among hundreds snatched from their dormitories in one of Nigeria’s worst mass kidnappings.

Two weeks on, emotions are still raw, but hopes remain alive for their safe return.

“Sometimes you try not to cry. You try to calm … to control the family,” said Livinus, who struggles to console his wife, who goes without eating the whole day.

At home, the pupil’s siblings, who are aged nine and three years, keep asking about the whereabouts of their brother.

“As a father, you have to be strong,” said the 44-year-old, bespectacled, soft-spoken Livinus.

Parents have been living through trauma since armed gangs stormed the St Mary’s Catholic boarding school in the remote village of Papiri in Niger state and herded away more than 300 children.

Fifty children managed to escape and return to their homes while 265, including teachers and staff, are still being held captive, according to the school officials.

Nigerian authorities have been negotiating with the captors for the release of the schoolchildren whose location has been identified, according to security sources.

Since an early morning call informing him that his five-year-old son was among the schoolchildren taken, life has not been the same for the Livinus family.

– ‘We Are Hopeful’ –

Emotionally drained, Livinus, a maize and beans farmer, hardly leaves home, staying indoors to receive sympathisers who call every day to extend words of encouragement.

His other two children have been in “serious confusion and worry” for not have definite answers when they ask about their brother.

The emotional stress has been “too much”, said Livinus, who had never been so distraught despite having lost both parents and a child a year ago.

He has been going through “serious psychological trauma”, he told AFP, standing in a dishevelled garden in the state capital, Minna, where he lives with his family, 500 kilometres from Papiri.

“Even though you feel tears will come, you have to hide yourself to control some other things, so that the mother will not (have a) breakdown.”

“If it is death, you understand that this person has passed away, you bury the person…(but) you don’t know what this poor child is passing through,” he said.

His friend, whose two children are among those kidnapped, could not bear the trauma and died from cardiac complications days after the abduction, said Livinus.

Livinus has been worried about the health state of his son, who has been on medication for an undisclosed illness.

He has turned to prayers and fasting for divine intervention in freeing the children from their captors, reciting the rosary several times daily.

Despite his agony, Livinus’s appearance does not belie his emotional distress.

Sporting a neat short-sleeve white shirt with thin dark stripes and smelling of nice perfume, the ever-smiling father exudes a calm aura.

On Monday, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, flew to Kontagora, where he met the bishop of the diocese that owns St Mary’s school and its officials.

Ribadu told the school officials that the children were safe and would soon come back.

“Nuhu Ribadu came and renewed our hope,” Livinus said. “He gave us hope …(that) the federal government will do something”.

“We are hopeful.”

For Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, the bishop of Kontagora diocese, which owns the school, a bit of relief came after Ribadu’s visit.

“He came and assured us that the children are safe. They are all in good condition. So, it’s a matter of time. There is assurance that they will definitely come back. It can happen anytime.”

With that news, “I started having some rest, some sleep in the night,” he told AFP.

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Nigeria has, in recent years, recorded hundreds more mass kidnappings, with armed gangs targeting vulnerable populations for ransom and rampaging throughout poorly policed rural areas.

But the November 21 one sent shockwaves in the country and came after US President Donald Trump threatened military action in Nigeria to stop what he calls the killing of Christians by radical Islamists.