OBY Ezekwesili-led Bring Back Our Girls movement has said they will be marching to the Aso Rock Villa State House , Abuja on Thursday January 14 2016 to engage President Muhammadu Buhari on the state of the Chibok Girls with regards to his statement on the girls during his recent media chat.
A statement signed by Oby Ezekwesili and Hadiza Bala Usman reads: “The Bring Back Our Girls Group, families of our Chibok girls, the Chibok community, and all sympathisers to the cause will be marching to re-engage with the president on Thursday 14 January 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 have already dispatched a letter to the president, duly acknowledged by State House officials. We have often said that our Chibok girls are the symbol for all the abducted, oppressed, repressed, abused, violated, disadvantaged, hurting people not only in Nigeria but around the world.”
In Regarding the December 31st deadline of the Federal Government and the Presidential Chat, Ezekwesili stated: “It was utterly shocking when the president declared in a BBC interview on 24 December that the terrorists had being ‘technically defeated’ without referencing the rescue of our Chibok girls whom he had set as the benchmark for measuring such success. We however, waited for the December deadline to elapse.”
The statement also read that during the December 30 media chat, President Buhari stated that the Federal Government ‘wants all the girls intact’ and that ‘If a credible leadership of Boko Haram is ready for negotiation without any condition we are ready to listen to them.’
The statement also quoted President Buhari as stating that ‘the Federal Government has no credible intelligence on where our girls are.’
It read: “We are extremely disappointed that seven months after his strong promise at inauguration and six months after his pledge to the parents, Chibok community and our movement that he would rescue the 219 daughters of Nigeria, his statement was lacking in urgency and assurance of strategy for result.
“Furtherm that the President gave the impression of a reactive approach of ‘waiting for credible Boko Haram leadership’ to tell us whether our girls are alive or not, falls disappointingly short of the proactive feedback we expected “
The group maintained their refusal to accept the lack of “credible intelligence on the girls’ whereabouts” as a tenable reason and described the submission as ‘evident lack of progress’ in rescuing the Chibok Girls.
