Political Briefs
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THE leadership of the Bring Back Our Girls organisation took its campaign to Aso Rock on Thursday, January 14. Oby Ezekwesili, campaign leader, led members of the group and parents of the abducted Chibok Secondary School girls on a protest to the Presidential Villa, Abuja, to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari.
However, the group was received by Aisha Alhassan, minister of Women Affairs, Dan Ali, a retired brigadier-general and minister of Defence , Babangana Monguno, national security adviser and Gabriel Olonishakin, chief of Defence Staff, at the old Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja.
Apparently disappointed, the group decried the failure of President Buhari to receive them at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. At the time, Buhari was receiving President Boni Yayi of Benin Republic, who was a state visit, in his office.
Nevertheless, Alhassan, who addressed the group, asked Ezekwesili to brief the government officials on their mission to the Villa, but she politely declined.
The former minister of Education, who insisted on meeting with the president, explained that Buhari in July promised to rescue the girls and they were in the Villa to hear from him on what he had done so far.
According to her, members of the movement had nothing to say until they hear from the president. Ezekwesili also decried Alhassan’s remark that the group did not give enough notice before coming.
After explanations from each member of the government’s delegation, Monguno announced that he would try to get the president to come and address the group.
The group had to wait for about three hours before President Buahri showed up at about 1:45 pm after his meeting with the Yayi. The meeting then went into a closed session.
A copy of the speech presented by Ezekwesili to the president during the closed meeting showed that the president was told that the government could not claim victory over Boko Haram without rescuing the girls.
Speaking with reporters at the end of the meeting, Ezekwesili said: “What the president said was that his statement during the media chat that they did not have credible intelligence was being truthful in the way that he knows how to be and that he was not prepared to tell any lies.
“That they do not have the kind of reliable intelligence that would enable them rescue the girls as immediately as we are demanding and that, therefore, we would continue to try to bear with him and that based on the fact that the government has recorded considerable success in decimating Boko Haram and its hold over the Northeast and that what remains is rescuing our Chibok girls and other affected citizens that are in abduction.
“And that, therefore, we will have to wait and that they would make the effort. He pleaded with the parents that his government would place as much efforts to rescuing the girls and that was the same message he had given to them before and that he was repeating the same message.
The President stated that he would also have expected us to acknowledge the efforts made, but that he wishes that we would agree that he was committed to the matter of our Chibok girls.
“He used the specific phrase that he sleeps and wakes up thinking about the rescue of our girls,” Ezekwesili said.
More than 200 girls were abducted in their school in Borno State on April 14, 2014.
— Jan 25, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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