Chibok girls: Senate summons NSA, other security chiefs

The Senate Thursday resolved to invite the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, and other security chiefs to brief it on their efforts to secure the release of the Chibok school girls.
The upper chamber also commended the Bring Back Our Girls group for their doggedness in the campaign for the release of the Chibok girls.
It asked security agencies to do everything humanly possible to ensure that release of the girls.
The resolutions followed the adoption of a motion by Senator Dino Melaye (Kogi West) and three others entitled “Abduction of Chibok school girls-two years after.”
The motion elicited angry reactions from Senators who felt that two years was long enough for the government to have recovered the school girls.
Senator Melaye lamented the plight of the girls and their parents.
He insisted that the Federal Government cannot be said to have succeeded until the girls are rescued.
He said: “We cannot succeed as a government until those girls are released. Getting back the over 200 Chibok school girls into the society is important and a must for our security agencies.
“The abduction of over 200 girls by Boko Haram has wrongly affected us as a people as could be seen in the international condemnation of the government’s slow reaction to this unprecedented outrage committed against Nigerian womanhood. Never before has such criminal viciousness been perpetrated on Nigerian womanhood.”
Melaye noted that Thursday “makes it 730 days, 17520 hours and 1,051 minutes that our Chibok school girls have been under captivity. It will be recalled the night of 14-15 April, 2014, 276 girls were kidnapped from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, the responsibility for the abduction was claimed by Boko Haram. Luckily, 57 of the school girls managed to escape making 219 still missing.”
He said that outside propaganda videos created by the Islamist militant group, none of the girls has been seen and the families of the missing girls have been traumatized because of their daughters.
Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, in his contribution said that Melaye and some other members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) used the abduction of the Chibok school girls to win last year’s general elections.
Akpabio wondered why those who led protests against the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan to rescue the girls have suddenly kept mum.
He said, “I remember in 2014, Dino Melaye used to wear T-shirt and he led the protest to ensure that the abducted school girls were released.
“He was always at the National Fountain to lead a protest against the government. He eventually cashed in on it and won election to the Senate. Other people in APC also did the same thing.”
Former President Jonathan came under local and international attack over the way and manner the government handled the issue of the abducted school girls.
Jonathan was accused of playing politics with the rescue of the girls.
At last year’s general elections, President Muhammadu Buhari who was the presidential candidate of APC, promised to rescue the girls two months into his government.
The government has insisted that it does not know the whereabouts of the girls and when they will be rescued.
Some other Senators, who also supported the motion, asked the federal government to go beyond the yearly ritual of celebrating the anniversary of the abduction of the girls.
The lawmakers said the government should explore every available avenue to ensure that the girls are rescued.

https://www.today.ng/news/national/106621/chibok-girls-senate-summons-nsa-other-security-chiefs