Chibok: Jonathan tasks school proprietors on security

President Goodluck Jonathan
| credits: Reuters

President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday asked school proprietors in the North-East, especially those who want to run boarding system to put basic security in place as part of measures to ensure students’ safety.

“Everybody that owns schools, especially in the North-East, if they must keep students in boarding, there must be a basic security provision,” he said.

Jonathan spoke when the Chairman of the Presidential Fact-Finding Committee on the Abduction of Chibok Schoolgirls, Brig.-Gen. Ibrahim Sabo (retd.), presented the committee’s report at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

He said while he was not expecting that such proprietors should secure the services of a battalion of soldiers, the presence of five policemen would be enough.

Jonathan said, “The story is that the abductors came in military uniforms and told the students that they were taking them to safety so that they won’t be attacked by Boko Haram.

“If there were at least five policemen on duty that night, they would have alerted the students. Even if there would be abduction, the number could not have been as high.”

Describing terrorism as a sad event, Jonathan said it was painful for him because as he was talking, the abducted Chibok girls were still in the hands of criminal elements.

Likening the situation to a country at war, the President said he would not rest on his oars until terror is crushed in the country.

While saying that terror attack anywhere is an attack on everyone, the President assured Nigerians that Boko Haram violent activities would not last forever.

He, however, said his administration would not limit its anti-terrorism efforts to military intervention only as it had begun looking at economic issues to improve people’s welfare.

He added that a Victim Support Fund would soon be established to cater for children who have been orphaned by the activities of the Boko Haram sect as well as those whose business premises had been destroyed.

Jonathan promised that the Federal Government will rebuild the Chibok school using army engineers, but after abducted girls would have been rescued.

He also assured the committee members that the Security Council would study the report and take necessary action.

Chairman of the committee, Sabo, said that 219 girls were still missing after the mass abduction carried out by members of the Boko Haram sect in Chibok on April 14.

The 219 students were among the 276 seized from the school during the midnight raid.

The chairman revealed that during the siege laid to the school by the terrorists, 119 students were able to escape before their colleagues were abducted.

He added that among the 276 girls abducted, 57 girls escaped from their abductors while they were being moved through a zig-zag route.