Concerned parents of FGC Azare students have raised alarm over the reported brutal attack on four students by fellow students of the school, leading to their hospitalization. The young victims were accused of sodomy by their attackers.
According to reports, the four students – Marfulus Kusawumba, Resa Raymond, Barnabas Gideon and Haruna Salihu Yakubu -were already asleep at their hostel when they were swooped upon by their attackers. They subjected the boys to severe beatings using any available weapon. They accused them of homosexual acts and threatened openly to kill and bury them in the school and that nothing will happen.
Not even the shouts of agony and scream for help could stop the attack or attract the attention of the school authorities. The victims were terribly violated and left for dead.
One of the victims, Haruna Salihu was dealt a blow that left a deep injury in the cornea part of his eye while the others sustained serious degrees of injury in various parts of their body including their private parts. According to a consultant ophthalmologist who examined him, Haruna require immediate surgery to save his eye from permanent damage.
Investigation into what led to the savage attack on students by fellow students while the school authorities looked away indicated that the accusation of sodomy was a mere ruse. Haruna’s offense, it was revealed, was that he gets along with his Christian friends in the school which some of the Muslim students do not like. In order to teach him a lesson, our source said, his attackers decided to accuse him and his friends of committing homosexual act. “It was more like giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it; those boys did not commit any offense and of course they were not into any kind of sodomy as they were wrongly accused by those violent students”, the source lamented.
A parents of one of the victims expressed shock and consternation that such brutal attack could be visited on those young students by fellow students while the school authorities could not do anything to stop the attackers or protect the victims.
“This is barbaric and inhuman’; if a group of students could commit such atrocities, took law into their hands without verifying the allegations against the four students, then one day if care is not taken, death will be the result”.
On what he intends to do to get justice for his kid, he said, “I want to make it clear that we will lodge a letter of complaint on this matter with the Minister of Education, Permanent Secretary and the Director of Principals of Unity Schools in the Ministry, to avoid such humiliation in the future. I’m appalled that the Principal of the school is not taking responsibility in the safety of school children entrusted in his care. What manner of Principal is that?”.
It was learnt that the school authorities, in a show of gross insensitivity, sent a letter to the victims, not to sympathize with them or assure them of justice, but to ask them to return back to school.
“My child who sustained injury has to be treated first before thinking of going back to school”, one of the parents vowed.
There is no official response by school to the brutal attack on students by fellow students of the school as at the time of filling this report.
FGC Azare has been in the news for wrong reasons since the appointment of Dr Bukar Bukarbe as the Principal of the school. Immediately after his appointment, some students and parent who knew him protested against him, claiming that he was complicit in the massacre of students of FGC Bunu Yadi by Boko Haram terrorists in 2024, when he was the principal of the school.