The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Dapchi

  • Dapchi schoolgirl Leah Sharibu to be freed —IGP Idris

    The Inspector General of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris, said the abducted Dapchi school girl, Leah Sharibu, will be freed today from the Boko Haram captivity.

    Idris spoke with newsmen when he visited the Military Command and Control Centre, Maimalari Cantonment, Maiduguri.

    ‘Obviously, I am aware and that is what we are just discussing. I am supposed to go to Dapchi today but because of the girl, I learnt she may be released.

    “It is a sort of understanding that we do not create much security situation and I move with a helicopter. By the time I fly there, they might think I break and that was why I postponed the visit to Dapchi,” he said.

    Idris disclosed that he had directed the deployment of four mobile police men and female personnel in each of the schools in the northeast to assist in providing protection of the students and teachers.

    He said that he embarked on the assessment tour of the northeast to appraise the situation to forestall the reoccurrence of the Dapchi incident.

    “I have visited the schools to assess our deployment to the schools; I am here now to visit the military and I spoke to all my officers in the three commands, to encourage them to have a greater synergy with the military and other security agencies.

    “I believe with this we are going to have enhanced security to all communities in the northeast region”.

    Idris noted that there was significant improvement of the security situation in the region, adding that credit should go to the military and other security agencies.

    Also, Maj.-Gen. Rogers Nicholas, the Theatre Commander, Operation LAFIYA DOLE, described the visit as part of mutual working relationship, adding the military and police were working as a team to facilitate successful implementation of the counter-insurgency campaign.

    Nicholas said that the military in collaboration with the police had re-opened the Maiduguri-Bama-Banki Highway, stressing that there was effective synergy between the military and police in the theatre of operation.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Idris had visited police formations, schools and liberated communities in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States in the past two days. (NAN)

  • Dapchi and the Northern Question

    According to an Arab proverb, to flee your fate is to rush to find it. Whenever weighty historical problems are swept under and hermetically sealed, they have a way of popping up in the least expected places. Let us congratulate the federal authorities for the release of the Dapchi girls. At least the Buhari administration has shown more focus and seriousness than its predecessor when it comes to dealing with hostage crisis.

    But beyond the jubilation and ululations many things do not add up and there many questions unanswered which raise grave doubt about  government credibility and its fundamental ability to deal with the most pressing national emergency of our time. Taken together, these questions raise justifiable concern about the ability of the nation to survive in its current architectural format, and they hark back to the harsh conundrum that is the Northern Nigerian Question.

    Nigeria, in general and the north in particular, face a serious political, economic, social and spiritual emergency. There is a hint of frustration and authoritarian distemper in President Buhari’s decision to criminalize the politicization of abduction. Any sane person should know that this is not the time to take partisan pot shots at the government. But General Buhari must appreciate the reason why many of his compatriots have become querulous and incredulous about the dark tragi-comedy that the Boko Haram war is fast turning out to be.

    When the general from Daura was given the nod ahead of the incumbent, it was because Nigerians thought that he could deal with the security nightmare unfolding in the northern fringes of the nation. Nigerians remembered with enduring nostalgia and admiration the Major General Buhari who ignored official orders to halt as he chased marauding Chadian soldiers deep into their sovereign territory.

    There can be no doubt that the old Boko Haram sect is weakened, disoriented and factionalised. But this has led to the emergence of a splinter group that appears to be far more sophisticated, more focused, more ideologically driven and hence far more dangerous than the savage bloodthirsty sect led by Abubakar Shekau and his crazed cohorts.

    While Abubakar Shekau and his gang rely on murder and mayhem, their emergent rivals appear more tame and temperate. While Shekau favours a scorched earth policy which devastates the entire landscape, its competitors are more thoughtful and strategically humane which accounts for the considerable local support and popular buy in. The Abu al-Barnawi group is bent on suborning the old order through a combination of military force and political cajoling. These people are here for the long haul, and it is a sign of state exhaustion to offer them amnesty.

    The question is: how did we get into this spot? How is it possible that an ill-assorted militia can enter and re-enter at will swathes of Nigerian territory without any challenge whatsoever? The first thing denizens of Yobe state tell you is that this break- away faction occupies a recognizable and identifiable chunk of the state. In effect, it means that Nigeria is sharing territorial sovereignty with a rogue militia and its break-away faction in at least two states of the nation.

    The profoundly destabilising and humiliating implication of this dualized state sovereignty was obvious last Tuesday as the Abu al-Barnawi faction of Boko Haram rode into town in a triumphal convoy before depositing their precious human cargo near the site of abduction. The Nigerian security forces wisely kept out of sight. The question should not be why this was so, but how we ever got into the dreary pass in the first instance.

    It was like a scene out of some epic movie. The al-Barnawi people had plenty of time to spare. They did not forget to bring on a certain horror charm offensive and swashbuckling daredevilry, admonishing the entranced populace to be of good behaviour and to refrain from sending their girls to school. The whole exercise was to teach them a lesson. In a bizarre finale, they even found the time to preach for about twenty minutes before sweeping away in the same manner they came, hailed and cheered on by the bewitched populace. Could this be part of the truce?

    Lest we forget, the break-away faction told the world that they were holding on to Leah Sharibu, an abducted girl who had failed after repeated drilling to renounce her Christian faith. Those jubilant about a happy ending to the Dapchi debacle seem to miss an important point. As long as that girl remains in lone captivity, this is the most flagrant assault on the secularity of the state that we have witnessed since independence and the advent of the modern nation-state in Nigeria.

    Those who believe that this cannot be going on in contemporary Nigeria have already concluded, a tad unkindly, that what we are witnessing is nothing but an elaborate hostage-driven hoax to  fleece the federal exchequer; a cynical security war-gaming to boost General Buhari’s re-election plans and to make fast bucks on the side. As proof, they point at the predictive ease and facility with which some principal state actors and Boko Haram ambassadors at large insisted that the abducted would soon regain their freedom. And it turned out that they were right.

    Where then do we go from here, in a situation in which a heretic sect appears to be in clandestine collusion with the state to fatally undermine the fundamental raison d’etre of the same state? By insisting that the government did not pay a dime as ransom, the federal authorities fatally undermined their own case by resorting to what is known in old legal parlance as overstatement of insecurity. This is the same government which claimed that Abu Musab al-Barnawi and his confederates came in the dead of the night even as the social media was awash with daylight snapshots of the entire operations.

    As for sabotage, there seems to be plenty of this at play. It is obvious that there are rogue elements in the military, the security services and innermost sanctuaries of government actively bent on bringing the government to heel. It was not long ago that it was rumoured that an advance military unit was on the verge of overrunning the Boko Haram operative headquarters in Sambisa forest before the operation was suddenly called off.

    Despite the tremendous improvement in the fighting quality and pluck of the Nigerian military machine since the advent of the Buhari administration, this covert destabilization makes it very vulnerable. When combined with the attitudinal shift of an increasingly receptive local populace, they give the Boko Haram sects a superior power of surveillance which makes the Nigerian army a sitting duck for its adversaries.

    Not to be discounted is the international dimension to the conspiracy to dismember Nigeria. The Maghreb is awash with arms from ISIS/ISIL, the implosion of Syria and stateless Libya. For starters, President Buhari needs to step down the needless confrontation with the Shi’tte sect in Nigeria. The point has been made. They are an urbanized group without the power or capacity to overrun the nation.

    Nigeria is a secular state with a multi-religious society. To allow it wittingly or unwittingly to be branded as a satellite Sunni state is to invite savage reprisals from a formidable array of Shi’tte states and sympathisers from Iran to the Levant. No one is sure how far rogue elements from these countries have penetrated Nigeria and its porous borders.

    It is obvious that with the Boko Haram crisis and the herdsmen imbroglio, the north is sitting on a keg of gun powder. It has been nine years since the Boko Haram rebellion began with the murder of its leader, Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf. Rather than abating despite all the noise about degrading, it has mutated into the worst, low-intensity war the nation has seen in its existence.

    Like an unattended sore, Boko Haram has now metastasized into a festering wound of the nation. To compound matters, it has now spawned a sect far more dangerous because of its political savvy and ideological surefootedness. The objective remains essentially the same and equally repulsive and reprehensible, but the al-Barnawa variant is far more potent because it is more systematic and politically inspired in all its theocratic malignancy. Two centuries and approximately two decades after the Uthman Dan Fodio rebellion, the north is playing host to another theocratic insurrection.

    This is worse than a hegemonic struggle. It is a crisis of knowledge production and modernization driven by religious fundamentalism on all sides and fuelled by the fear of human capital and its capacity to drive change and genuine transformation. Without capitalizing on human capital, on the forlorn multitude of the north, all other reforms are naught and nil.

    It must be admitted in retrospect that there were many Nigerians, this writer included, who put their bet on General Mohammadu Buhari as the only man with the charisma and prestige to nudge the north in the direction of modernity and modernization without provoking a social implosion and an apocalyptic meltdown of the social order.

    That prestige, tragically enough, is beginning to disappear, as the president in who much hope and faith was placed seems to have other things on his mind. But so far, it has been a somnambulist sortie with unintended consequences upstaging consequences of inattention. In the circumstances and since statist messianism does not appear to work, it behoves on the president to address his mind to the widespread clamour for restructuring in the country as it allows the north to solve its own problems with its own template, time-line and time-table.

    These are the stark choices before us. To imagine that a state-assisted resolution of the Northern Question can be postponed any further is to live in a fools’ paradise. Fortuitously, a military spokesman has disclosed that Nigeria is too vast to be centrally garrisoned. As it has been repeatedly stated in this column, you may ignore history but history will not ignore you. The Northern Question is the most critical aspect of the National Question.

    When your neighbour is eating a strange insect and you do not offer words of caution, you are likely to suffer the collateral damage. Already the vultures are gathering and the killing field in the north is gradually beginning to find its way down south. It is going to be mayhem on an unimaginable magnitude. The Nigerian project has gone beyond an ill-assembled rabble bogged down by primordial fixations.

    The Dapchi tragedy is a warning signal of the looming apocalypse. The real sheriffs finally arrived in Dapchi town last Tuesday. Yet without any sense of irony, Ibrahim Coomassie, the chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum, could flatly declare that Nigeria could not do without the north. He could only provoke pity and pathos in genuine Nigerian patriots. It is not funny when a person who should be unhappy feels so smug and happy with himself. Let the Sardauna of Katsina go to Dapchi or Sambisa to proclaim that. He will be unpleasantly surprised.

  • The Chibok, Dapchi abductions

    Since 2014 after the abduction of Chibok girls, the social, electronic and print media have been awash with analyses of the albatross called Boko Haram. The security, socio-political and implications for development and peace for our fledgling democracy, especially in Northeast and neighbouring countries and the ECOWAS sub region have been enunciated by incisive and in-depth analysis by notable platforms such as Journalists’ Hangout on Television Continental, Channels TV, Africa Independent Television and others.

    What started in the 1980s as local issue – Bulunkutu riots by Maitasine group have today blossomed and snowballed into a hydra-headed monster that seemed uncontrollable.

    Over 273 teenage school girls were abducted from their hostels in April 2014 by blood thirsty Boko Haram members.

    It took 18 days or so for the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to admit their abduction. Political blackmail, government’s insincerity, intrigues by those who benefited from the terrorists’ insurgency have all combined to make it more difficult to release the girls. After many denials and half-truths, we were informed that Shekau – the terrorist group’s leader-had been killed only for another video to be displayed that he is still alive.

    The poor girls must have been distributed to sub-groups by the terror group and attempts to help by governments of the United Kingdom, United States and others with intelligence/strategy and military hardware were truncated by corruption.

    The BBOG’s (Bring Back Our Girls) consistent protests have put pressure on government to ensure security of life/property in the country.

    Nigeria has not learnt to use the experience of its military retirees to resolve the country’s challenges, too bad!! During the Vietnam war of 1971-1973, which the U.S.A prosecuted and eventually lost with sophisticated military weaponry. One of my student friends at the University of Guelph, Ontario Canada, once told me emphatically on several occasions that she had not heard from her parents. But she insisted “American cannot win this war.” One day, we prayed to God to act on behalf of the “poor and oppressed” as the Bible says. Despite bombardment of the Vietnamese rice farms by the powerful world power, America lost the war. What were considered as crude but successful innovations helped the Vietnamese to tell their success story. The Nigerian military top brass must read and adapt war books of the past. Denials of truth by federal/state and local government leadership, sycophancy and corruption of great magnitude have been responsible for the debacle called Boko Haram insurgency.

    This situation is unacceptable and makes Nigeria a laughing stock in the comity of nations. Strategies must change. Nigerians must be told the truth. New strategies and weaponry, as well as commitment to the country’s integrity are some of the things to be put in place.

    God help Nigeria to win this terrorist war! Amen.

     

    • By Dn. Adelani Akinola, Lagos.

     

     

  • Why Dapchi should never have happened

    Like everyone else, I have been following the events of the last few days fairly closely, particularly the one concerning the abduction and release of another big number of secondary school girls from Dapchi in Yobe State. I’m sure your reaction to that news was as good as mine — ‘Not again!’ Here we are, still grieving and finding it difficult to get over the disappearance of the Chibok girls, many of whom have not yet come home, only to wake up to a repeat of the same thing again, in the same way! Believe it or not, that is history repeating itself. Honestly, it sounded like a baaaad TV show being repeated for the sake of the doubly blind, and just makes you think, ‘is there no one doing any thinking in this television house?’

    Seriously, no good thing ever comes from history repeating itself. For one thing, it is better for experiences to be fresh. Like someone said, let me be surprised. For quite another, it is better to put bad experiences behind you, pick yourself up, brush the dirt off you, and hope that tomorrow will bring that nice surprise. To go repeating history is to not let sleeping dogs lie by poking it. God help you if you go poking the wrong dog.

    Anyway, the Dapchi occurrence brought back a slice of Nigeria’s history, one I’m sure she would really love to forget. We don’t quite know how it happened. Some, like the PDP, are saying it was probably stage-managed. Some are saying it is because the boko haram that we claim is defeated wants to assure us it is safe and sound, like a boxer nearly out for the count lifting a finger up to indicate it is not surrendering yet. And yet some are saying that it is but a publicity stunt by the APC for President Buhari.

    Unfortunately, while the story was unfolding, there was the president himself telling a bewildered nation that they should note the difference between his reaction and the reaction of his predecessor when the Chibok story broke. Indeed, he patted himself in the back for promptly swinging into action. Now, I ask you, how is that possible?

    It is difficult enough to reach behind one and wash one’s own back. You practically have to do all kinds of twisting and turning, bending down and straightening up, and turning around like a dog chasing its own tail, just to reach your body’s back wall on your back-washing days. So definitely, back-patting oneself is one unpleasant feat. I guess this is why they told me, growing up, not to pat myself on the back or I would end up twisting my arm. Yet, the president managed to pat himself on the Dapchi case.

    True, there are many things we do not understand about this case. There are reports that the military was warned shortly before it happened that the boko haram was planning another raid, yet the military did nothing. I hear investigations are still on-going on that one. More curious though is the manner in which the girls were said to have been returned. It beggars all belief, as the bard himself would say. I hear all the protocols of a visiting president were observed in the town for the boko haram people. The question I kept asking myself, as I went round and round the house that day, was why the boko haram people who returned the girls were not arrested. Why, I asked myself, were they given a red, no, blue-carpet drive-in instead? Seriously, right now, I have more questions than answers I tell you.

    I honestly do not know what to think on this matter. As usual, I am thoughtless, zilch, no thoughts. I’m just wondering though about the publicity stunt theory. Why would anyone want to publicise someone by inflicting on the nation another sore while the previous one is yet to heal? Why would anyone want to publicise anyone else by inflicting pain on yet more families while the tears of some other families have not yet dried? Man, I really have no thoughts on this.

    I am thinking that if we want to make President Buhari into a hero, all we have to do is look at the revolution in rice mills taking place in the country right now. From all accounts, there are now some Nigerian rice mills taking huge bites out of rice importation. Seriously, I love that. True, Nigerian rice tends to not be fully sifted of stones and other debris, but the fact that we have been making efforts from the time of the previous Minister of Agriculture to institute a policy of home growing and developing of rice is well pleasing to me. Thankfully too, I hear that the present minister is building on that foundation. Soon, we should be rice-independent, if all plans go well, I hear.

    Should anyone want to give President Buhari a cape on that rice story, I will second it and more. In fact, I would suggest a good-sounding, well-deserved name like ‘Captain Nigeria’ or better still ‘General Nigeria’. I would even volunteer to sew the cape using Nigeria’s colours, and add a few trimmings here and there. I would definitely teach him to fly and zoom around in it too.

    I cannot however consort to assist in making anyone a hero in the Dapchi case, because there are just too many edges in the story that won’t sew up and or make a good cape, try what I would. So, I am too angry with everyone right now; in fact, so angry, I can sulk.

    Clearly, we don’t need a hero now; what we need is good governance. What with all the cattle colony palaver, on-going herdsmen’s killings, the eternally present corruption and everything else, we are all looking for signs that someone somewhere is building this nation. Right now, there are no such signs.

    Dapchi should never have happened, not for a million reasons on earth. There is enough military presence in that part of the world, there are claims that the central nerve of boko haram has been struck, and yet, here we are, with another shameful sob story. Don’t despair though, the worst is yet to come.

    The worst part for me is the admittance by the government that it did not even rescue the girls by itself. It needed the help of other international bodies to get the girls out. And I ask myself, for how long are we going to go on like this? What do we need to do to be self-reliant? It is true that no man is an island, and sooner or later we all require a helping hand. Can’t we learn from what someone said a long time ago to his daughter and I think I’ve mentioned it on this column once or twice: if you need a helping hand, there is one at the end of your arm?

    Sooner or later, we will have to face the stark reality about self-governance. Self-governance denotes and connotes that we get to know our arm and the hand at the end of it and how to use both for the benefit of the citizens. It also means that we have to learn to collate our resources and find how to equitably distribute them for the benefit of the entire country, not one’s region or one’s group or one’s town. That is the only way to ensure that Chibok or Dapchi never happens again. If we did this from the beginning, they would not have happened in the first place. It’s a shame that Dapchi had to happen again.

  • Dapchi residents await Leah Sheribu’s arrival

    

    Residents of Dapchi, Yobe state are expecting the release of Leah Sheribu, the only girl still being held by Boko Haram insurgents who recently kidnapped some girls in the town and returned them on Wednesday.
    

    Speculations are rife in the town that Sheribu who is being held because of her refusal to denounce Christianity may be released this weekend.
    

    Our correspondent who visited the town reports that all shops were locked and the streets deserted .
    

    Soldiers on guard in the town have also withdrawn from the security check points to the outskirts awaiting Sheribu’s arrival.
    

    The visit of the Inspector General of Police to the town has also been cancelled
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Gates, Dapchi and human capital development
    
			
    ON Thursday, during a special National Economic Council (NEC) meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, governors from the 36 states or their deputies, the billionaire philanthropist and Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr, Bill Gates and Africa’s richest entrepreneur, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the grim realities of the Nigerian nation sinking deeper into economic gloom if nothing tangible is done in terms of heavy investments in its vast human capital was echoed by everyone and anyone who mounted the podium. Whilst representatives of the development partners rolled out discouraging and, sometimes, heart-wrenching figures to buttress their arguments that we have, indeed, failed to invest in Nigeria’s greatest asset for a technologically and knowledge-driven future—its people, the pictures painted by the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Ajewole and his counterpart in the Education Ministry, Alhaji Adamu Adamu, confirmed the ‘blunt’ depressing facts which Gates was to later reel out to the audience.
    

    One after the other, the various speakers rub the facts on our faces. Nigeria, they say, has the highest figure of out-of-school children in the world and presently without a functional investment in human capital. The country is also rated as “one of the most dangerous places to give birth, with the fourth worst maternal mortality rate in the world, ahead of Sierra Leone, Central African Republic and Chad”, in addition to the crying fact that, statistically, one in three Nigerian children is chronically malnourished. Those were the words of Gates even if they are the notoriously true. And, in spite of all the efforts presumably being made by the government to change the narrative, Nigeria remains a low income country no thanks to policies that are incapable of guaranteeing a ‘foundation for sustained prosperity” with the vast majority of its people barely living from hand to mouth. No picture could be grimmer than this I guess.
    

    Some would ask: what has all these got to do with Dapchi, a town in Yobe State where 110 girls were criminally abducted and, eventually, heroically returned earlier this week? Well, a lot. In my mind, Dapchi, like Chibok, is a metaphor for all that is good and bad about Nigeria. Since the abduction and return of the girls, Nigerians have been at their mischievous best in interrogating the matter. When I speak of the scary figures, statistics and data being rolled out to justify why Nigeria needs to do more in the area of investment in human capital, what those in authorities do about it would depend on their beliefs. For example, all the pontifications by Gates and the other partners may come to naught if the government views the figures as concocted or an attempt to smear its image and bring it into disrepute with its teeming supporters. On the other hand, the government could decide to sift through the messages no matter how distasteful they seem to be and kick start the process of investing on its future assets, the people. It’s all about the belief that would an action or inaction!
    

    And that is where Dapchi comes in because the abduction affects a key factor in human capital development for an economically sustainable future—education especially that of the girl-child which is already at an abysmally low figure in some communities. It is sickening that, in returning the girls in commando style back to their anguished parents, the insurgents were said to have strictly warned the Dapchi parents to stop, forthwith, the idea of sending their children to learn what they perceived as “Western education”, adding with irritating glee that the entire saga was not “terrorism but just to teach us a lesson!” Now, that should scare anyone that can make some sort of sense out of all that was said in the Banquet Hall of Aso Rock that day. When bandits enjoy the liberty to scare the hell out of hardworking parents whose only ‘crime’ was sending their wards to acquire the kind of knowledge that would place them at a competitive advantage in the foreseeable future, then we all need to get worried, don’t we?
    

    Listen to Gates: “The most important choice you can make is to maximise your greatest resources, the Nigerian people. Nigeria will thrive when every Nigerian is able to thrive. If you invest in their health, education and opportunities—the “human capital” we are talking about today—then they will lay the foundation for sustained prosperity. If you don’t however, than it is very important to recognise that there will be sharp limit on how much the country can grow.”
    

    And so, in looking at the long term effects of the madness going on in the North-East and some other parts of the country, we must admit that we may just be digging craters that would doom our future prospects especially with the silly rants and the shockingly inhumane attitudes some of us have displayed in expressing our opinions on the Dapchi abduction. In saying this, I must admit that this government didn’t help matters in its shoddy handling of information flow surrounding the abduction, search and subsequent return of the girls. When the government, through its officially-recognised spokespersons, started bandying different figures on the number of girls that were returned by the bandits, the negotiation that took place before they were taken back to their parents, why it didn’t insist on the return of the Christian lady that refused to succumb to the blackmail of converting to Islam, how five or four of the girls died in captivity and if ransom was paid or not, it goes without saying that the government created a veritable ground for mischief makers to make bankable permutations of what they tagged a stage-managed abduction drama. Pity.
    

    While conceding that certain things just didn’t add up in the many stories flying around concerning the Dapchi girls, I also believe that many of the commentators on both sides of the divide are far gone in their political coloration of events of such nature thereby making objective reasoning a near impossibility. Those Dapchi girls, we must remember, are just part of the lucky few that survived in a country described as ‘one of the most dangerous to give birth” with “one in three children chronically malnourished.”
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Dapchi Girls: NUT urges FG to provide adequate security in schools
    
			
    The Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT has called on the Federal Government to provide adequate security to boarding-schools, especially those in the North-East or run them as day schools.
    

    Dr Mike Ike-Ene, Secretary-General of the union, made the call in an interview with our reporter on Friday in Abuja, while reacting to the recent release of some abducted Dapchi girls.
    

    According to him, it is necessary for the government to put the right security measures in place and not to wait until something happens; the life of any Nigerian child is not worth losing carelessly.
    

    He said that the incidence was a lesson to everyone, urging the government to strengthen the security apparatus of the country to prevent future occurrence.
    

    “I am saying that government should look at our security apparatus; if they cannot ensure 24 hours service of security in our schools in the North-east let them stop boarding schools.
    

    “Children can come to school from their homes and the moment the students are in the school premises security should be provided until the school closes.
    

    “The security agencies should also be placed in all the entrance by which people can use to enter the host communities or escape.
    

    “There must be a proper structure provided for a particular security agency at the security posts.
    

    “Also, having a particular security agency to be in charge of a particular security post in various schools will help to detect when things are going wrong.
    

    “The effort will help to reduce the number of victims if there is emergency situation,’’ he said.
    

    Ike-Ene noted that in the North-east there was always gap for the girl-child education, saying that this incidence of abduction in schools could put more fear and terror in their lives.
    

    His said: “even the parents too may now be unwilling to allow their children, especially the female to go to school due to the fear of the unknown.’’
    

    Ike-Ene, however, commended the Federal Government for being proactive in securing the release of the abducted girls from Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State.
    

    He also appealed to the government to use same approach to ensure the release of the remaining girls as well as the other chibok girls.
    

    “We are still anxious to see the remaining girls, because they are our students; we still want them back. We want to praise this government and we are asking them to do more.’’
    

    On February 19, some school girls were abducted by insurgent groups in Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State.
    

     
    

     
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Buhari receives 106 Dapchi schoolgirls, one boy in Aso Rock
    
			
    President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday received 106 released Dapchi schoolgirls and one boy at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
    

    

    

    The meeting with the girls started few minutes past 12 noon when the President arrived the Council Chamber Press Gallery at the State House.
    

    The insurgents, Boko Haram, had abducted 110 school girls from Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State on the 19th of February, 2018.
    

    

    The girls were released unconditionally on Wednesday morning after they stayed in the terrorists den for one month.
    

    

    They were moved to Abuja the same day to receive medical attention.
    

    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    After 31 days in captivity, 104 Dapchi pupils back
    
			
    Barely days after Defence Minister Brig-Gen. Manzur Dan Alli assured of their release within two weeks, 104 of the 110 Dapchi schoolgirls were freed yesterday. They were driven back to freedom by their Boko Haram abductors in the wee-hour of yesterday.
    

    REACTIONS yesterday trailed the release of 104 of the 110 pupils abducted by Boko Haram insurgents from Dapchi Government Secondary School in Yobe State.
    

    The pupils were released by the insurgents after 31 as unwilling guests in the custody of the militants.
    

    The announcement of their release early yesterday drew reactions from many quarters. Many of those who reacted applauded the early release. Some alleged that the early release of the girls confirmed their suspicion that the abduction might have been stage-managed.
    

    Some of the reactions are captured below.
    

     
    

    Release of girls brightens our hope, say Chibok parents
    

     
    

    There was excitement in Dapchi yesterday, even as the release of 104 schoolgirls by insurgents brightened hope for Chibok parents, whose children have been missing since April 2014.
    

    One of the parents, Mrs. Yana Galang, who was in Dapchi, Yobe State, to offer condolences to those whose daughters were kidnapped by Boko Haram, was shocked when she met the people shouting with excitement.
    

    Mrs. Galang’s daughter, Rifkatu, is still missing nearly four years after she and over 200 of her classmates were abducted by Boko Haram militants from their dormitory in Government Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State.
    

    The insurgents had four weeks ago, kidnapped 110 girls from a school in Dapchi in the biggest mass abduction since the Chibok capture which prompted international outrage and the global campaign #bringbackourgirls.
    

    Mrs. Galang, a mother of eight, said she had planned to tell the parents to be patient for their girls’ return as she had been.
    

    “When we asked why people were running, they told us that they were expecting their girls, that Boko Haram was bringing them home,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
    

    “Our visit became something else,” added Mrs. Galang, one of 30 Chibok parents who made the 11-hour trip to Dapchi the previous day to meet with the parents of the missing girls.
    

    The Federal Government yesterday confirmed that 104 of the girls seized in Dapchi on February 19 had been freed. It denied a ransom was paid for their release.
    

    Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Chibok parents’ association whose niece was abducted at Chibok, described the scene of jubilation after the girls were reunited with their families.
    

    “Right in front of us, the militants brought the girls and dropped them and then left,” he said.
    

    He said some of the girls, aged between 11 and 19, looked “panicked” initially and could barely respond to questions.
    

    No official details were given about those who did not return, but Mrs. Galang said she spoke with a number of the freed girls who told her that five of their schoolmates had died and one was held back because she refused to convert to Islam.
    

    “They said that three girls fell (out of the trucks) and into the river on their way to (the) Sambisa (forest hideout of Boko Haram). Two others died in the forest,” she said.
    

    She described how she wept watching the parents being reunited with their daughters as she still had no word about the fate of her own daughter.
    

    “I cried seriously,” she said.
    

    Campaigners welcomed the release of the girls while calling on the government to do more to ensure the release of the Chibok girls whose abduction was the biggest publicity coup of Boko Haram’s nine-year insurgency.
    

    The group has killed at least 20,000 people, made homeless more than 2.7 million and sparked one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, according to aid agencies.
    

    “This is incredible news, and fortuitous at a time when the Chibok parents are visiting the Dapchi parents,” said Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, head of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation which sponsored the Chibok parents’ trip to Dapchi.
    

    “However, it puts on us an even greater responsibility to ensure that all of the remaining Chibok girls are returned. Nearly four years in captivity is an outrage,” she said.
    

     
    

    MURIC laudsed Govt, military 
    

     
    

    The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has reacted to the release of the abducted secondary schoolgirls in Dapchi, Yobe State.
    

    In a statement yesterday, MURIC’s Director Prof Ishaq Akintola, rejoiced with the parents and commended the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government and the Nigerian Army for the early return of the girls.
    

    The group, however, berated the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan for its slow response to the abduction of Chibok girls in 2014.
    

    The Muslim group also sympathized with the families of the five Dapchi schoolgirls who allegedly died in the attack.
    

    The MURIC statement reads: “Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan can now see the difference between action and inaction, between goodwill and bad faith and between lukewarm attitude and proactiveness.
    

    “Chibok and Dapchi are now reference points in a tale of two Commander-in-Chiefs: one who turns the other cheek, while his army turns and runs, and another who takes immediate action and puts insurgents on the run.
    

    “We therefore call on Nigerians to continue to support President Muhammadu Buhari.
    

    “We charge the Federal Government to ensure adequate protection for all the schools in the insurgency zone. Defeated, frustrated, bankrupt and hungry, Boko Haram is looking for ways of embarrassing the Federal Government, sourcing for food and ransom money. We must never be caught napping again.
    

    “However, we are saddened by the loss of five of the girls. We sympathise with their parents and pray that Allah will grant them Aljannah Firdaus.
    

    “We also pray that Almighty Allah will give the parents the strength to bear the loss.”
    

     
    

    UNFPA: we’ll offer
    

    psycho-social, reproductive healthcare support
    

     
    

    The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has said it is on standby to offer emergency reproductive healthcare and psycho-social counselling and support to the released Dapchi schoolgirls.
    

    In a statement issued in Abuja by its Media Adviser in Nigeria, Mrs. Kori Habib, UNFPA congratulated the Federal Government over the release of the girls after 30 days in captivity.
    

    Mrs. Habib stated that the UN agency was already in Yobe, providing psychosocial counselling to parents and families of the girls.
    

    She added that the Fund was on standby to support the government toward providing comprehensive psychosocial support and other specialised services.
    

    “UNFPA staff and supported health clinics are on standby to provide medical check-ups to the released Dapchi school girls,” she noted.
    

    Mrs. Habib also quoted the UNFPA Representative in Nigeria, Ms. Diene Keita, as commending the Federal Government for helping and protecting women and girls affected by the conflict in the Northeast.
    

    The Country Representative, however, expressed concern over what she described as “thousands of women and children still held in captivity by Boko Haram.”
    

    Ms. Keita, therefore, called for greater efforts to bring the women and children still held in captivity by Boko Haram to safety and home to their families.
    

    She said: “UNFPA condemns all forms of violation and calls on Boko Haram to end all grave violations against women and girls, especially the abduction and sexual abuse and forced marriage of girls.
    

    “UNFPA calls on government to ensure that schools remain in places of safety and security, where young girls and boys can learn and grow in peace.
    

    “Girls and young women must be allowed to go to school without fear of violence and unjust treatment so that they can play their rightful roles as equal citizens of the world.
    

    “There must be measures put in place to stop violation of the rights to education and dignity to women and girls in Nigeria as a whole.’’
    

    She added that since the insurgency in the Northeast started, six in 10 girls were reported to have experienced a form of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and many had limited access to reproductive healthcare.
    

    According to her, UNFPA and partners provided direct prevention and response services to over 200,000 women and girl survivors or at risk of GBV through the fund’s “safe spaces” and community outreach.
    

    She explained that over 3.5 million survivors were provided with sexual and reproductive health care services and psychosocial support and counselling.
    

    “UNFPA has a comprehensive response for women and girls affected by the conflict in the Northeast and works with national authorities to support women and girls who escaped or were released from Boko Haram,” she said.
    

     
    

    UNICEF pledges support to Youth ministry
    

     
    

    The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has commended the Federal Government efforts at the return of the abducted Dapchi schoolgirls yesterday.
    

    In a statement, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Mohamed Fall, expressed delight over the report on return of the girls that were abducted on February 19 by suspected Boko Haram insurgents.
    

    Fall, who noted that the girls would have been exposed to physical and sexual violence, however expressed the commitment of the organisation to collaborate with the Yobe State Ministry of Youth to give necessary support to the girls and their families.
    

    He also commended the efforts of concerned authorities and all parties in ensuring the safe return of the girls to their families.
    

    Fall said: “We are pleased to see that the girls abducted in a school in Dapchi are back in the safe environment of their families.
    

    “UNICEF is working closely with the Ministry of Youth in Yobe state to provide the necessary support to the girls and their families.
    

    “Over the last one month, the girls may have been exposed to physical and sexual violence. They need the support of their families and communities to feel safe and return to school.
    

    “UNICEF is also working with civil society organisations to ensure that each girl receives individual attention from medical treatment to psychosocial support.”
    

    He condoled with the parents and families of five girls reported dead.
    

    The UNICEF representative reiterated that schools should be safe spaces and protected at all times.
    

    Fall noted: “Since the start of the insurgency in 2009, over 2,295 teachers have been killed and 19,000 displaced and almost 1,400 schools destroyed.”
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    DSS negotiated Dapchi girls release, says DHQ
    
			
    The Defence Headquarters has said the military were not involved in the negotiations leading to the release of 101 Girls out of the 110 Girls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists in Dapchi, Yobe state.
    

    

    Acting Director of Defence Information, Brig. Gen John Agim said in a text message that the Department of State Services, (DSS) , led the negotiations for the release of the girls.
    

    

    Following series of enquiries from the Defence Headquarters on the role of the Military regarding the release of the girls in the early hours of Wednesday, Brig. Gen Agim responded via a text message saying “the girls were released through negotiations led by the Department of State Services (DSS)”