Former Minister of Education and leader of the BBOG group, Dr. Oby Ezekwezili |
The BringBackOurGirls advocacy group campaigning
for the rescue of 219 abducted Chibok secondary schoolgirls by the Boko Haram
in 2014 has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to set up a search and rescue team
to find the missing girls.
This followed a statement by President Buhari on
Wednesday during his maiden media chat that his administration had no
intelligence reports on the whereabouts of the Chibok girls.
The BBOG, in a new year press conference held at the Unity Fountain, Abuja on
Friday, asked the Federal Government to investigate all statements by
high-ranking military officers that they knew where the Chibok girls were.
Addressing journalists, a former Minister of
Education and leader of the BBOG group, Dr. Oby Ezekwezili, said the Federal
Government should also make public, the Gen.Sabo fact-finding committee report
on the abduction of Chibok girls.
The group, while lamenting that the President did
not mention any rescue effort for the girls in his new year message, demanded
that the President should give the rescue of the abducted Chibok girls the
priority attention it deserves.
“Boko Haram cannot be said to have been defeated
technically or otherwise without the safe return of the abducted daughters,” it
noted.
Ezekwesili said, “We especially noted with great
dismay that the issue of rescue of our Chibok girls and other citizens in
terrorist captivity did not feature in the president’s New Year address to the
nation today (Friday). The implication of such a deliberate omission is not
lost on us.
“Therefore we, #BringBackOurGirls movement,
families of our Chibok girls, the Chibok community, and all sympathisers to the
cause of these innocent schoolgirls continuously unjustly treated will be
marching to re-engage with the president in two weeks, on Thursday January 14,
2016 at the State House.
“This date will be exactly 21 months since their
abduction, and three months short of two full years in captivity. We shall meet
at Unity Fountain as from 8.30 am that day to proceed on the march. We have
already dispatched a letter to the President, duly acknowledged by State House
officials.”
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