The BringBackOurGirls coalition has described as disappointing President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement that there was no intelligence report to show if the abducted 219 Chibok schoolgirls were alive and in one place.
The group said the President’s comment exposed the lack of intelligence gathering capacity of the Department of State Services and other security agencies.
The Chairman, Chibok Community in Abuja, Tsambido Abana, also expressed shock over the President’s comment, stating that the government had been telling lies about rescuing the abducted girls.
He stated that he slumped on hearing that the security forces had no information on the girls’ location.
“When I heard the President’s comment on Chibok girls, I was shocked and I slumped on my chair; I was confused. My thinking is that it means what they have been telling us is all lies, if they are saying they don’t have any clue on the whereabouts of the Chibok girls,” he stated in a telephone interview on Thursday.
The BBOG spokesperson, Tunji Olanrewaju, stated that the BBOG would continue to hold the Federal Government accountable for the missing girls until they are rescued and re-united with their families.
Buhari had, during his media chat on Wednesday, admitted that he did not know if the girls were alive or not.
“There is no firm intelligence where those girls physically are and in what conditions they are, but what we learnt from our intelligence is that they (terrorists) kept on shifting them around so that they are not taken by surprise and get freed.
“And a whole lot of them are not in one place and we don’t know how many divisions they (Boko Haram) have and where they are. There is no intelligence to say that the girls are alive and in one place. That is the honest truth,” the President had said.
But the BBOG stated that it would hold Buhari to his promise during his inauguration on May 29, 2015, when he said the insurgency could not be said to have been won without the rescue of the schoolgirls.
Olanrewaju said, “We are disappointed, because we consider it worrisome that 623 days after the abduction of the girls, we are still talking about no information or lack of intelligence about the whereabouts of the Chibok girls. This for us shows that the expected solution to the lingering insurgency is not near at all and what it also exposed is the inadequacy of the intelligence gathering capacity of the DSS and all the security agencies put together.
“Some terrorists are holding people captive and you don’t have information about them or where they are being held up. It is very disappointing. There is a lot of inadequacy that this is exposing.
“Based on what the President said at his inauguration on May 29, the counter-insurgency war could not have been won without the rescue of the Chibok girls and so we stand on that.
“The counter-insurgency war will not be over until we have a closure on the abducted 219 Chibok girls. We reject dearth of information and intelligence on their whereabouts totally. We are compelled to continue with our demand that this government must account for the girls. They must rescue them and they must reunite every one of them with their families and parents.”
Commenting on the claim by the government that it had defeated Boko Haram technically, the BBOG described the claim as “bogus and pure grandstanding by the Information minister.”
The group acknowledged the fact that Boko Haram had been degraded, but noted that the sect was still occupying three local government areas in Borno State.
Olanrewaju insisted that the government could not claim to have defeated the terror group if it could still carry out attacks and kill as many as 50 Nigerians in one attack.
He said, “The position that Boko Haram has been defeated is pure grandstanding by the minister. He also went further to say the media should stop glamourising Boko Haram attacks. That is double standard. The media has been keeping the nation abreast of what is going on in the insurgency and counter-insurgency operation. He cannot ask them to suppress information on it.
“That the military has met the December deadline is pure grandstanding. We do not think Nigeria controls every shred of territory right now, because we have credible information that Boko Haram still controls three local governments. A lot has been done and that we acknowledge.
“We know that the capacity of Boko Haram to launch large scale attacks has been reduced, but I don’t think the President is correct to claim technical victory, because as long as Boko Haram can kill 50 Nigerians, you can’t claim technical victory.”
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