KIBAKU AREA DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION (KADA)
PRESS RELEASE ON MARCH 9, 2015
Gentlemen of the Press,
You would recall that Kibaku Area Development Association (KADA) had earlier on several occasions addressed you about misinformation and inflammatory statements by various Government officials about the abduction of 276 SS3 school girls from Government Secondary School, Chibok in the night of 14th April, 2014 by Boko Haram insurgents.
We are once again compelled to address you about the actions and utterances of some government officials regarding the abducted girls:-
- INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS BY THE BORNO STATE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
Earlier during the abduction saga information credited to His Excellency, the Borno State Governor, apportioned blame of the abduction on the parents and Chibok Community alleging that the parents refused to send their daughters to Maiduguri to write the Final year Examinations on the request of the Governor. This allegation was totally false to extend that at the meeting of the parents with Mr. President where the Governor was in attendance, a parent challenged the Governor that nobody came with such information to them.
After some weeks the Borno State Commissioner of Education, made similar allegation to that effect.
While we (the parents, relations, concern citizens and members of global communities) remain calm in our traumatized state for almost eleven months waiting the rescue of our daughters, on Saturday 28th February 2015 information credited to Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Borno State on an interview with BBC Hausa service alleged that the Chibok Community refused to send their daughters to write the final Examinations outside Chibok saying that the only thing they needed was logistics and therefore assured that there was adequate security in Chibok. This is also false and malicious which added more pains to the parents.
We the members of Chibok Community residence in Abuja therefore wish to appeal in a strong term to all individual Government representatives to desist from such unguarded statements that will add more injury to already traumatized parents. At this juncture we would like to call on all the Local, State and Federal Governments to collaborate with a view to rescuing our daughters while avoiding blame game.
- PRESIDENTS REPRESENTATIVE MEETING WITH PARENTS OF ABDUCTED GIRLS AND CHIBOK PEOPLE
It would be recalled that the Minister of State for Power, Hon. Mohammed Wakil through his Special Adviser on Media Olawale Rasheed had claimed on 5th March, 2015 that the Minister, representing Mr. President had a meeting with parents and relatives of the abducted girls in Maiduguri on Thursday, March 5, 2015.
We wish to state categorically that this is completely false.
No Parent of the abducted girls or relative was at a meeting with any representative of the Federal Government in Maiduguri or any other venue known or unknown to us.
Barrister Mohammed Wakil, Minister of State for Power was never in any meeting with any Parent of the abducted Chibok girls.
The few Chibok people at the ‘meeting’ were politicians and associates of the Minister but no parents of the abducted school girls or representatives of the Chibok people was in attendance.
Those at the ‘meeting’ who spoke only expressed their personal opinions but not for the abducted girls’ parents or Chibok people in general.
We therefore call on the Hon. Minister who was once a member of the House of Representatives representing Chibok, Damboa and Gwoza Federal Constituency, but has never come near Chibok for over ten years and had neither console the families of the abducted girls since the incident; not to interfere with the abducted Chibok school girls saga and to stop deceiving Nigerians by claiming what he has never done. We advise the Federal Government not to involve the Hon. Minister (Mohammed Wakil) in whatever issue concerning the Chibok abducted girls.
Thank You.
Signed:
Hosea A. Tsambido Nkeki Mutah
(Chairman Abuja Branch) (Vice Chairman)
