Set up rescue team for Chibok girls, FG told

Adelani Adepegba, Abuja

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.”