Police beef up security around Benue boarding schools to forestall attacks

Following the threat letters received by Government College, Makurdi, Benue State from the dreaded Boko Haram sect, the Benue State Police Command said it had beefed up security around all boarding schools in the state.
The Benue State Commissioner of Police, Adams Audu, stated this when he met with the members of staff of the school on Monday in Makurdi.
It would be recalled that the Principal of the school, Godfrey Ugudu, on Saturday said the school had received letters from the Boko Haram sect threatening to attack the school.
Ugudu said that the school received two letters, which had the same content, on May 14.
The letter said the sect would invade their school on Friday or Monday to abduct their boys, whom they would marry to the secondary school girls abducted in Chibok.
According to Ugudu, the letter asked them to inform Saint Gabriel Secondary School opposite their school to also get prepared as they promised to invade the place too.
Audu said that though the sect threatened to attack the two schools only, security agents would not take chances as they would provide security for all the schools.in the state.
He said: “All the boarding schools in the state are covered by the security operatives.
“Our men had been deployed to strategic areas around all boarding schools because we got instruction from police headquarters that we should not take any threat for granted.”
The commissioner however, said that the police would give priority to the schools mentioned in the letters.
Audu urged the members of staff staff of the schools to cooperate with the police by reporting suspicious movements to them and other security agencies.
“We need maximum cooperation from you to arrest the situation so that the students can heave a sigh of relief,” he said.
In his remarks, the Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of the Zone, Abiola Adeniji commended the proactive measures put in place by the Benue State Police Command to arrest the situation.
Adeniji said that they were not handling the threat with kid gloves.
He said that security was a collective responsibility and urged the people to report any case of insecurity to the security agents.
Adeniji rolled out the telephone numbers of security operatives to call in case of emergency.
The state Commissioner for Education, Elizabeth Ugoh, in her reaction in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, thanked the police for their timely intervention in the matter.
Ugoh urged the members of staff of the school to be careful in the way they present the report to parents of the students, as negative reports would escalate the issue and make parents pick their children from the schools.
She said: “As you can all see, the situation has been put under control by the police so there is no need for parents to be scared about the safety of their children.”