Muyingo repeated the directives to schools to get rid of burglar proof bars in windows, saying for example, that perhaps this would have saved some boys at Lhubiriha SS after the attackers locked the doors
The State Minister for Higher Education, John Chrysostom Muyingo has urged school owners and managers to continuously implement the security measures that the government set for them to ensure the safety of learners. He was presiding over the 81st anniversary of Trinity College Nabbingo in Wakiso on Sunday where he represented the Minister of Education and Sports Janet Museveni currently under coronavirus-induced isolation.
Commenting on the attack on Lhubiriha Secondary School near Mpondwe town in Kasese district, Muyingo said if the measures put in place were being followed, either the attack would have been prevented or the extent of the damage minimized. At least 42 people, mostly students, were killed and 25 abducted when suspected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels attacked the school on Friday night, burning a dormitory and looting food.
Minister Muyingo, who visited the school on Saturday, said his own assessment revealed that the authorities there had neglected or abandoned all the security measures, which would have saved the lives of the students. Apart from the measures, Dr. Muyingo, himself a proprietor of several schools, also urged students to be vigilant by watching out for and reporting any stranger or suspicious person sighted in or around their school premises.
Muyingo repeated the directives to schools to get rid of burglar-proof bars in windows, saying that perhaps this would have saved some boys at Lhubiriha SS when the attackers locked the doors.
//Cue in: "All of us...
Cue out:... burglars cut out,"//
Some leaders in the area have instead blamed the security forces whom, they say, reached the site of the massacre two and a half hours after the incident, despite both a police station and an army detachment being within one and a half and three kilometers respectively.
President Yoweri Museveni also questioned the kind of response by the security forces in the area, as well as the absence of intelligence information on the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the border and the lax vigilance of the community.
In his statement issued on Sunday afternoon, Museveni said vigilance helped UPDF repel the rebels when they attacked Ntoroko last year, and 26 were reportedly killed and the other 25 captured. Giving his account of the situation Minister Muyingo said it is hard to understand why the attackers wanted to ensure that everyone at the school was dead, by even hacking to death girls who tried to flee.
