The #BringBackOurGirls group yesterday expressed doubt in the rescue mission of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted over 4 months ago by Boko Haram insurgents even as they faulted the Federal Government’s indecision on the matter.
Speaking to journalists at the group’s protest in Abuja to mark the schoolgirls’ 130 days in captivity, one of the leaders of the group and former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, wondered why the government would refuse to engage in negotiation or military action in order to rescue the girls after such a long time.
Ezekwesili pointed out that it is never a sign of weakness for a government to engage in negotiation for the release of the girls rather, it would be an act of empathy and a sign of responsiveness to the plight of the families of these girls.
Her words: “This is 130 days after they were abducted and we are nowhere closer as to knowing the fate of those girls and having any information on their rescue.
“The challenge that we have is the fact that we are told that a rescue operation is going on but when you connect the dots in the statements that are made, it leaves you within the logical frame without any precise sense of a rescue operation because in the case of abduction, what we know around the world is that people try to rescue through a military operation or they try to rescue through negotiation and they try to sometimes have a mix of those two options.
“Each time that we have listened to statements from government, including from the President, it has seemed to dismiss any of these options and so that leaves us asking, what exactly is going on 130 days since these girls were abducted?.
On the report that the military knows the location of the Chibok girls, she wondered why it was taking a long of time for the girls to be brought back to their families.
“We don’t even see the evidence. About 219 girls are still in the hands of the terrorists and people have moved on as if nothing has happened. We need the girls to be rescued urgently from the den of the terrorists. We are not a weak country. We need to go in and make a statement that we are not a weak country. We want them rescued. We don’t want lies. We need the truth from government”, she said.
Ezekwesili, however, expressed optimism that the girls will be rescued, stating that “We are optimistic and no matter how others have moved on, we have refuse to move on. We will be pretending and lying to ourselves if we move on.
“We saw how Boko Haram slaughtered 51 boys. Nothing has been done about it. When we remain silent when a bad thing happens, we empower the enemies to continue. We must rise up and speak against this”, she said.
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