GSS Kankara: I Was Misled To Say 10 Students Were Abducted – Garba Shehu

By Emmanuel Aziken

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu has opened up on how he was made to believe that only 10 students of the Government Science Secondary School, Kankara were kidnapped by the bandits that raided the school last week.

Reflecting on the development, Shehu said it is a hazard of the job relying on authorities who are sometimes not correct or do not have a correct perspective of issues. He said that it was one of the hazards of being a spokesman.

Mallam Shehu had at the onset of the kidnap mistakenly claimed that 10 students of the GSS Kankara were kidnapped and spoken so, even authoritatively.

But reacting in the light of realities, Shehu told GWG:

“In doing this job, we are faced with as many risks as a journalist faces in reporting issues.

“When you are not physically present at an event, what you do is to rely on accounts rendered by others who happen to be there.

“We can be misled as you reporters are, as it happened with the conflicting numbers we gave of the abducted students of the Government Science Secondary School, Kankara who have happily all been returned to their families.

“What you do all the time before you appear for an interview, you do your research on the given subject. You make calls so that you are yourself, informed. What then happens when they gave you the incorrect facts?

“There was absolutely nothing to suggest that the number of ten as the students taken by the kidnappers was given us after a high level briefing by people who should ideally know.

“But I went beyond that to crosscheck with other authorities and the confirmation was given as ten. As it turned out, more than 300 were taken as can been seen from the returnees.

“I feel sorry that I was misled into hurting grieving parents. I absolutely have no reason to underplay the seriousness of the situation we were dealing with. As a father, I would have felt the same way about this misrepresentation as did the aggrieved parents. Sorry about that.”

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