29 April, 2014

ABDUCTED GIRLS NOW IN CHAD – COMMUNITY HEAD

A new dimension was added to the missing Borno State female students’ saga yesterday as an elder of Chibok community (where the girls were abducted by insurgents), Dr. Pohu Bitrus, said they had been taken to Chad Republic by their kidnappers.
His assertion came as parents of the abducted 230 girls who were forcefully taken away from their hostel in Government Girls Secondary, Chibok, said the incident had made life miserable for them.
Dr. Bitrus, who is the leader of Chibok Indigenes Association, told the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, that information available to them is that the students had been moved to neighbouring Chad Republic.
He said that although there was no official confirmation of the report, since the incident happened, they had been inundated with reports that the girls were being moved to different locations by the insurgents.

He spoke in Hausa thus: ‘‘An kai wasu Sambisa, wasu an tafi dasu gefen Dikwa, da kuma Marte da Monguno a arewacin Borno,” (meaning some were taken to Sambisa, the fringes of Dikwa, Marte and Monguno in the northern part of Borno).
Dr Bitrus lamented official security position on the abducted girls, saying it leaves parents and members of the public in darkness.
The BBC correspondent in the area said when he sought reaction from the Joint Task Force, JTF, spokesman in Borno State, Col. Muhammed Dole, he referred him to the Director, Defence Information, Maj-Gen. Chris Olukolade, who did not answer calls to his telephone.
Gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram sect had stormed Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in the wee hours of April 14 and seized the girls whose ages were reported to be in the range of 16 and 18.
Meanwhile, a member of the House of Representative, Mohammed Tahir Monguno, has claimed that insurgents, have forced the girls into marriage.
Monguno, who represents Chibok in the National Assembly, made the revelation in an interview with Voice of America, VOA, Hausa Service.
He disclosed that the abducted girls were being forcefully married in an area called Jiri, Mafa Local Government of Borno State.
According to the lawmaker, his constituents from the Chibok Local Government area have told him that the girls were forced into marriages with insurgents soon after their abduction.
He said: “Villagers saw them and the whole world knew that the very day they were abducted, some of them were married out in one area called Jiri, Mafa Local Government Area. It was there that some of them were married before they were moved with the rest. It is about 30 kilometres from there to Maiduguri on a tarred road. Everybody knows this. The security people know it. It is not that people are not cooperating, they are giving information and nothing is being done. These girls were abducted in Chibok, but yesterday, my constituents called and said that they saw them in one area called Shuwaram. From Chibok to my constituency is about 200 kilometres. How can they be carrying the girls for about 200 kilometres without security men detecting it? That is why we are saying that if government wants to succeed, it must stand up and it is not about deploying military alone, but giving them motivation”, Monguno advised.
Also yesterday, civil society delegates to the ongoing National Conference asked security agencies to immediately secure the release of the abducted girls.

Source: Nigerian Pilot

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