Some security experts in Nigerian appeared to be
toeing the line of former President Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ), who on Friday
insisted that the abducted Chibok girls couldn’t be rescued.
Obasanjo, a guest speaker at the 7th Osun
Interactive Session, hosted by the Staff Club of Obafemi Awolowo University
(OAU), Ile-Ife, on Friday insisted that the possibility of rescuing was
negligible.
The President of Association of Industrial Security
and Safety Operators of Nigeria (AISSON), Dr Ona Ekhomu, said that Obasanjo spoke
his mind. He said that it was cruel to make the family of the girls believe
that the girls would be found. According to him, such belief is making them not
to have closure.
He said: “Abubakar Shekau said on tape that he has
sold those girls. He doesn’t bluff. He’s a cold blooded killer. He sold some
and married some off their Boko Haram and terrorist commanders around the
world. Most of them were shipped out,
even to Sudan. There are intelligence reports to this extent. There’s nowhere
you can find those girls holed up in one place. They are not being kept
somewhere, waiting to be rescued or negotiated for. Boko Haram doesn’t believe in negotiation.
It’s an ideology based struggle. We should help the family to find closure. We
should help them to come to terms that those family members are gone and it’s
an act of God. It’s nobody to blame and let them move on with their lives.”
Mr. Richard Amuwa, Managing Director of Mega Guards
Services Limited, said he would have love to ask Obasanjo how he came about his
summation, he however stressed that he wouldn’t argue with the former
presidents opinion.
Amuwa added: “Obasanjo is a retired general,
ex-military president, ex-democratic president; he has seen it all. He’s a
nationalist. I don’t know two third of what he knows. But as a security person,
do I buy Obasanjo’s idea? Yes! I have thought of it sometimes. If we said we’ve
technically won the war against Boko Haram and we said we have combed Sabisa
Forest, then where are the girls? Nigel, Cameroun, Chad and all the West Africa
coasts are all part of the war against terrorism. These girls can’t be there
and security agents will not be able to find them. It’s becoming a mirage gradually.”
A former Commissioner of Police, Abubakar Tsav said:
“When people abduct girls, the first thing they want to do is to alienate them.
Once a girl is abducted and she stays with the kidnapper for about six months,
she forgets about home completely. And with the confessions of a girl recently
that she wanted to go back and meet her Boko Haram husband, it confirms what Obasanjo
is saying. Chibok girls cannot be found. We bombed here and there in Sabisa Forest, who
knows whether they were bombed there too. Who knows if they were used as
suicide bombers? Their issue should be painfully forgotten. It’s very sad
indeed. These Boko Haram can’t just
kidnap and keep them in one place. They must have separated them. Some of them
may even be in other countries. The mistake was made when they were abducted.
If immediate action had been taken, maybe some of them might have been rescued.”
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