More than one month after the outlawed Boko Haram sect abducted over 200 students of Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, the state Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, has said the need to be “cautious and not to overheat the polity as a leader” informed his decision not to speak on the incident which has sparked global outrage.
Speaking with journalsists, Shettima said he was particularly sad over the negative impact of the abduction of the schoolgirls on the state and the country at large, given the fact that he is an All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwart. “As a leader, I am not allowed to overheat the polity. I will not be a party to rock the ship of the state.
A lot of stories were flying that the abduction did not even take place and some of these theories came from the highest rebels of government. “One thing is that this incident happened at night. Secondly, as a governor I am not trying to make blames. I am a leader who is willing to accept responsibility for my actions and in actions and as I said earlier, I do not want to say so much in order not to scandalise the federal authority.
I want you to appreciate my peculiar circumstances. I am of the APC and we do not want to politicise the issue at stake. But believe me, there is hardly any attack that happens without the knowledge of the local community,” he said.
Apparently suggesting the initial lukewarm response of the federal government arose from a sceptical attitude towards reports of the abduction, the governor said: “If you heard (former minister of aviation) Chief Kema Chikwe spoke, you will know that when you see a frog dancing on the road, the drummer is not far off from the main road. Believe me, she was echoing the voices of the people higher up.
“Now, it is left to the judgment of each and everyone of us to testify if the girls were actually abducted or not. Leadership calls for restrain, otherwise believe me l know a lot. I have to restrain myself from speaking so much because discretion is a better part to fellow.
Believe me if I am to speak, a lot of heads will roll.” Shettima, who clarified reports which quoted him as saying he knew the whereabouts of the abducted schoolgirls, said: “We know the whereabouts of these girls in the context of the fact that we are the closest to the people.
We have a very robust platform and a security alert system. Communities upon citing unusual movements of vehicles usually alert us because we have sensitised them on the need to alert us. “Those girls were sighted by villagers and other people of the country side which we adequately updated the military. I will not dwell further on where they were cited for security reasons.
If I do so, I will be compromising the safety of those girls. But anytime we get information, and we do get information, we relay it to the relevant quarters for them to take it to another level to investigate further and see what we can do to rescue these girls.” On allegations that the abduction could have been avoided, Shettima said it was unfair for the federal government to have insinuated such, given the fact that there was an understanding between the state government and the West African Examination Council (WAEC).
“The Federal Government College, Maiduguri, is presently open with students in it writing their final year exams. Is it not a federal institution? We are not a unitary state. We are a federation. If we are to permanently closed down our schools, what message are we sending to the world? That Boko Haram has won?
Source: New Telegraph
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