Presidential Fact Finding Committee on Abducted Female Students in Chibok visited Mr. Jonathan.
—————————-
Despite that Borno State has been under a state of emergency for over
a year, President Goodluck Jonathan has virtually blamed the
authorities of the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State for
failing to provide security thus leading to the kidnap of 276 girls from
the school.
The final year teenagers were kidnapped by the Boko Haram from the school dormitory on April 14.
“If we had just five security personnel in the compound that night,
although they couldn’t have stood the firepower of the invaders, they
could have alerted the girls and they wouldn’t have been deceived,” Mr.
Jonathan said in Abuja while receiving the report of the Presidential
Fact Finding Committee on Abducted Female Students in Chibok, Borno.
Mr. Jonathan said if the school had provided security for the
students, “most of them (the girls) would have been able to escape and
probably the number taken would not have been up to 30.”
“But because there was no security at all, there was nobody to even warn the girls that there was danger’’, he said.
The President, therefore, urged school operators, especially those in
the north east of the country, to provide basic security for their
boarding students.
He said henceforth, school owners, especially in the north east, who
want to keep their students in boarding houses, must be ready to make
basic security provisions for their safety.
“Let me charge everybody, whether corporate bodies, federal and state
governments or individuals that own schools especially in the north
east, that if we must keep students in hostels, there must be some basic
security that should be provided,” he said.
“On the issue of Chibok, even if we had five police officers guarding
that school that night when the invaders came in, they couldn’t have
been able to deceive those girls.
“The story was that they came in military camouflage and deceived the
girls that they were soldiers, who came to take them on protective
custody because Boko Haram was invading the community, and they
followed.
“While I am not expecting school owners to put an army battalion on
guard, at least basic security arrangement should be made to protect
their students,” he added.
The president’s statement comes weeks after the West African Examination
Council, WAEC, said it warned the Borno State government of the dangers
of holding the final Year SSCE examination in Chibok.
WAEC said it only agreed to hold the examination in the school when the
state government assured it of adequate security. The state government
never denied the examination authority’s claim.
Analysts, however, questioned WAEC’s rational of asking a state
government, whose state is under a state of emergency, and who, even
before the emergency rule, had no control over security agencies, to
provide security for students.
The abduction of the Chibok students and the continuous killings by the
Boko Haram in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa has made several people including
the state government question the state of emergency.
The federal government has however defended it saying security officials need it to be effective in tackling the insurgents.
On Friday, Mr. Jonathan also disclosed that his administration would
not limit its anti-terrorism efforts to military intervention only as it
was currently looking at economic issues to improve people’s welfare.
He said in addition to government’s Almajiri school programme, his
administration was strongly supporting the Safe Schools Initiative to
keep children in troubled states in school.
The President said Victim Support Fund would soon be floated to cater
for those affected by the insurgency, including orphaned children and
those whose businesses had been destroyed.
He promised that the Federal Government would rebuild the Chibok school using army engineers.
“All buildings there will be demolished and rebuilt. That will start after the children are rescued.
“On completion, the federal government will not manage the school
because it is a state school. We will hand it over to the state
government to manage’’, he added.
He assured the committee members that the security council would study their report and take the necessary steps.
The Chairman of the committee, Ibrahim Sabo, said the report
addressed a number of issues that were incidental to the committee’s
terms of reference.
He listed the issues to include matters dealing with insurgency in
general and the military/political responses vital to overcoming the
current security challenge.
Mr. Sabo said the committee met with four of the girls who regained freedom and their families.
The chairman, however, advised that the report should be treated with
utmost confidentiality in order not to jeopardise the ongoing rescue
efforts or compromise national security.
This, he said, does not preclude government from releasing
information that may be useful for a better public understanding of
issues surrounding the abduction saga.
Mr. Jonathan inaugurated the committee on May 6 to provide government with accurate information about the incident.
Its six terms of reference included liaising with the Borno
Government and establishing the circumstances leading to the school
remaining opened for boarding students when other schools were closed.
It was also mandated to liaise with relevant authorities and the
parents of the missing girls to establish the actual number and
identities of those abducted, among others.
(NAN)
Posts
