Abuja, Nigeria – Renowned human rights activist and an international conflict resolution expert, Comrade Igbotako Nowinta has regretted that after more ten years of missing Chibok High School students in Borno State of Nigeria, the country has become a paradise for kidnappers.
Comrade Igbotako Nowinta, who doubles as the Executive Director, Nigeria Good Governance Research Centre, made this view via a press release he gave to journalists in Abuja, on April 16th, 2024, which he titled: “Missing Chibok Girls On My Mind: Nigeria A Paradise For Kidnappers,” to mark his birthday.
According to him, “The missing Chibok girls ten years after is one of the most sickening examples of unimaginable terror and tortured inflicted on the parents and guardians of those involved, which was allowed by inept political rulers, who have consciously turned our country into paradise for kidnappers.”
Here is the details of the press release:
“About ten years ago on the night of April 14 – 15, 2014, the adherents of Boko Haram brazenly spilled into the streets in Northern Nigeria, in sputtering violence and frightening bloodshed, and grabbed 276 students (ages between 16 – 18) attending Chibok boarding School, and took them away into the Sambisa forest.”
” It is absolutely unbelievable that ten years later, more than 90 of these helpless Chibok girls are still missing or unaccounted for. What has happened to the conscience of our political leaders?
“That ex- president Muhammad Buhari slept deeply and snored for 8 years without bringing the girls back is shocking; that the incumbent President Bola Tinubu has failed to offer new insights into this national shame is catastrophic.”
“I hereby challenge President Tinubu to do something extraordinary in bringing the missing Chibok girls back to their grieving families. Is Sambisa forest not part of our land; is it a fortress of demons that couldn’t be cleaned up?
“If Tinubu could allegedly dashed out 90 billion for 2024 pilgrimage and allowed the National Assembly to recklessly paddle the 2024 Budget Estimates running into billions of naira; and the elites persistently fund their squanderous lifestyles and afflict us with all manners of economic plagues, how much is needed to get sophisticated gadgets and weapons from developed nations, to track and hunt down perpetrators of kidnapping in our country?”
“What is happening today is toppling the mind, even as the masses are still writhing in pains due to constant cases of kidnapping across the country. What we have on our hands is simply failure of leadership; we see decay of social economic fabric due to gross incompetence, while democratic dividends have been replaced by widespread apathy, insecurity, hardship, misgovernance and vicious corruption.”
” The missing Chibok girls ten years after is one of the most sickening examples of unimaginable terror and tortured inflicted on the parents and guardians of those involved, which was allowed by inept political rulers, who have consciously turned our country into paradise for kidnappers.”
“As bonafide citizens of Nigeria, we should be able to put on the armour of rationalism, radical criticism and resilience to tame the excesses of democratic despots in our land, because we have been a pillar of shame and ridicule for too long. I am concerned that is why the missing Chibok girls are on my mind marking my birthday.”
“Even as insane torrents of hatred and violence continues to rage within and across the country in the name of kidnapping etc, we must be forensic in our demand for precise accountability in our democratic governance. I leave us with the timeless words of Abraham Lincoln:” Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.”
