Chibok girls: CACOL reiterates calls for their release, tasks Buhari

The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, has called on the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to leave no stone unturned in securing the release of the Chibok girls who were kidnapped on the night of 15th of April, 2014, including the kidnapped Leah Sharibu and others still in the captivity of Boko Haram insurgents.

This demand was contained in a release issued to DAILY POST on Saturday by the Centre’s executive chairman, Mr. Debo Adeniran.

He said: “Those girls have not been secured completely because of the lack of adequate will to explore all necessary processes required to bring back the girls. There is inadequate intelligence, commitment and funding of those cognate forces required to achieve the feat.

“All of these observed inadequacies combine to elongate the confinement of these hapless ladies (since they could no longer be referenced as girls, no more, because if they had been allowed fertile access to their education, many of them would have completed their service year now, as they were preparing for their final West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) during their abduction some five years ago). It is therefore appropriate to imply that some of them would have finished their University education and 1 year compulsory service to their nation, had the situation been different.”

CACOL said that though, successive governments have been paying lip service regarding efforts to bring the girls back, their parents and the generality of Nigerians need to be constantly kept abreast of proof of life for as many as still possible amongst them, their location, and whatever fate has befallen them, from time to time.

According to the group, this was the only acceptable response of a deserving government.

It added that “This much would not have been difficult, if there had been an effective intelligence and cooperative endeavor with neighboring countries, like Chad, Cameroon, Niger and any other places, where these insurgents have made their focus of activities.”

It maintained that the Federal Government has to demonstrate greater political will and put in more workable strategies and effective cooperative endeavours, with neighboring countries to achieve tangible outcomes that should be patently evident.

On Leah Sharibu, the abducted Dapchi schoolgirl, CACOL said, “It is just not enough for the government to keep on reassuring Nigerians that Leah is alive and well, but that extra efforts must be made to secure her release, in view of the fact that those abducted simultaneously with her had since regained their freedom on the intervention of the state while she is still in captivity due to her conscientious objection as an avowed adherent of her religious conviction.

“We therefore, advise that, the Buhari-led administration should take a step further, by stamping its foot in the sands of time through a complete overhaul of the security architecture of Nigeria in a way that reinforces the sacredness of lives and properties of all Nigerians and make provisions of their social welfare a thing of primary concern to the government rather than illicit accumulation of commonwealth by those entrusted with power.”