RELATIVES of the abducted Chibok girls have called on President Muhammadu Buhari to resign if he cannot rescue the girls accusing him of abandoning their daughters and not doing enough to secure their freedom.
Abducted from their boarding school in Borno State in April 2014, the girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in the middle of the night. Despite an international campaign to secure their release, Boko Haram has held on to the girls amid suggestions that they are using them as a bargaining chip in the hope of negotiating an amnesty with the Nigerian government.
Yesterday in Abuja, relatives of the captured girls tried to visit President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja but were stopped by security forces. The protest march organised by the #BringBackOurGirls group, was the second this week, during which the relatives of the missing girls said the president neglected them after repeated unfulfilled promises.
Enoch Mark, father of two of the girls, said President Buhari had failed the Chibok people who voted for him in 2015 with the hope that he would ensure the return of the girls. He added that many Chibok parents voted for President Buhari because they believed that he would ensure the return of their daughters.
Mr Enoch said: "You promised us that you were a military man and that you cannot lie. You said the war will not be over until the girls are back.”
“Now we hear shouts of victory and you turn around and say you do not know how to get our daughters. Former President Sani Abacha told us that no country can fight war for up to 24 hours without its government knowing about it, so if the president lacks intelligence to bring back the girls let him resign."
Another parent, the mother of Dorcas Yakubu, the girl who spoke in the recent Boko Haram video, said the federal government should exchange the detained terrorists for her daughter if the government had no better option. She added that the security operatives preventing her and the other members of the #BringBackOurGirls group from reaching the president were stopping her from fulfilling the request of her daughter.
Hauwa Abama, another mother of one of the abducted children, said the government was responsible for her ordeal. #BringBackOurGirls convener Oby Ezekwesili, expressed disappointment over the government’s inability to rescue the girls.
She said she was more disappointed that after seven months of the group’s engagement with the president, he was still saying that there was no credible intelligence to lead the government to the whereabouts of the girls. Ms Ezekwesili pointed out that the group would repeat their march to the Villa every 72 working hours until the president made a decisive decision on the Chibok girls’ rescue.
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