Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has asserted that Nigerians should not hold the President Muhammadu Buhari administration responsible for not rescuing all the kidnapped Chibok Girls.
It is like a self-accounting when you are exiting a position of public office to be humble enough to know that you have not done everything perfectly, Adesina said during Channels Television’s breakfast program, Sunrise Daily on Thursday.
“In 2015, we knew where Nigeria was, today we know where we are… Two hundred and sixty-seven were spirited away, about 57 escaped immediately, and over 100 have been returned by the administration.
“The ones that are left, I think 90-something, they are Nigerians, they have the right to be brought back,” he said about the girls who were kidnapped in 2014.
“But then, if a government came in when the trail was already cold and you couldn’t trace where the girls were taken, you can’t then blame it solely for not bringing them back, that would not be quite right. Dapchi girls were taken under the administration, and within the week they were recovered except maybe five including Leah Sharibu sadly.”
The special adviser stated that the government was proactive to tackle the kidnap at the time it occurred, adding that the incoming should take up the responsibility to recover the girls.
“I believe that with the Chibok Girls, we should rather appreciate God and appreciate the government for what was achieved. It is not as if the government folded its hands and didn’t do anything, it did its level best.
“And because the government is a continuum, the incoming government, if it recovers more of those girls, the country will gladly receive them,” he said during the show.
According to Wikipedia, on the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Prior to the raid, the school had been closed for four weeks due to deteriorating security conditions, but the girls were in attendance in order to take final exams in physics.
57 of the schoolgirls escaped immediately following the incident by jumping from the trucks on which they were being transported, and others have been rescued by the Nigerian Armed Forces on various occasions.
