The earnest hope of the nation to see the Chibok schoolgirls rescued alive has dimmed following a revelation by former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that some of the girls who refused to convert to Islam have been killed.
More than 219 schoolgirls were abducted on April 14, 2014, from their school in Chibok, Borno State by Boko Haram. More that 662 days have passed since the girls were taken.
The former president who was the guest speaker at the 7th Osun Interactive Session hosted by the Staff Club of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, last Friday, remarked that the possibility of the abducted schoolgirls being found again had become very slim.
He said: “Today, if anybody tells you he will bring back the Chibok schoolgirls, it is a lie. It is a lie. (President Muhammadu) Buhari has even said that he does not have any information about the Chibok girls except those who escaped and some of them have been rehabilitated.
The point really is this, where could they be now?”
He explained that it was from a respectable Sierra Leonian diplomat responsible for women affairs at the United Nations, who gave him insight to what happened to the Chiibok schoolgirls in the days following their abduction.
Obasanjo said: “I was talking to a Sierra Leonian diplomat who is responsible for women affairs at the UN. He said to me, ‘For now, sexual violence and human trafficking have been brought together in all areas of insurgency and that is what has happened to the Cibok girls. Some of them were sold and maybe in 10, 20,30 years, we will come back and we will hear some of their stories. But if anybody tells you he will bring back the Chibok girls, it is a lie.”
The UN diplomat, however, did not give any indication as to the number of the schoolgirls that wer killed by Boko Haram for refusing to convert to Islam. He also did not state how many were sold.
Obasanjo further blamed the former president Jonathan for not responding promptly, after learning about the abduction of the schoolgirls. He said that nothing was done more than 72 hours after the girls were abducted.
His words: “The former president got the information at 8am on the moring they were abducted and I have said it and even wrote it in my book that he did not even believe that Boko Haram was a menace. He believed that it was compelled by the North to prevent him from having a second term. His reaction was that ‘since they have said they want to make Nigeria ungovernnable, let them be abducting themselves’ and we have not got anyting out of that.”
Obasanjo said he has been directly involved in the rehabilitation of some of the girls that escaped from Boko Haram custody after they were abducted, nothing that they are now studing in America.
On Thursday, January 14, 2016, President Buhari met with parents of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls and members of the BringBackOurGirls campaign, during which he promised to launch a new inquiry into the circumstance leading to the abduction, assuring that the government would do anyting necessary to liberate the girls.
At the OAU event, lecturers and students of the university took advantage of the opportunity they had to grill the former president on his stewardship by asking him tough questions that demanded straight answers without prevarication.
The two-hour interaction, on the theme, “Reflections of an Elder Stateman: An Evening With OBJ, was presided over by Professor Fola Lasisi, former Vice chancellor of the University of Uyo, Also in attendance was the Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Bamitale Bamitale Omole, among other other senior officers of the institution.
At some point, the heat, seeming interrogating of his tenure provoked the legendary anger of the former president.”
One of the questions that got the former president angry asked by a Proffessor of Biology, who wanted him to explain why he refused to allow the Finance Minister and the Accountatnt General release some money appropriated for the Nationall Assembly.
In response. Obasanjo shot back: “You don’t know so many things that transpired during my administration and so many things that were not resolved, so don’t attack my intelligence.”
On a question posed to him by a Political Science student on how to succeed as a politician after godfatherism on the nation’s polity, the former president said he did not have any godfather.
“Polticians get their hands dirty and their feet wet before major opportunities come their ways in politics.y0u have to get your hands dirty and your feet wet in politics before you can make it. So,I admonish you (students to)work hard in order to gain ground and not rely on godfatherism because I never had any godfather.”
On the discord between him and Nobel Laurete, Professor Wole Soyinka, Obasanjo said: “I will trust Wole Soyinka as an aparo (partridge) hunter than trusting him as a political analyst. I have no issue with him.”
He commended President Muhammadu Buhari’s ongoing fight against corruption, and urged all Nigerians to support him with a view to putting an end to the menace.
On the major issue of Education, a retired Professor of Education reiterated the need to make it free, saying that the country needed the contributions of the citizenry to develop at all levels. Pointedly, Obasanjo shot the idea down, saying: “The country cannot declare free education alone without individuals contributing their own quota, maybe by paying or doing part-time jobs.”
SUN
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