Presidency speaks on Chibok schoolgirls, supports Buhari

Femi Adesina said the presidency stands by Buhari’s last statement
 regarding the abducted Chibok schoolgirls

The presidency has announced its support for President Muhammadu Buhari’s last statement regarding the Chibok schoolgirls who were abducted from their school by Boko Haram insurgents in April 2014. Speaking with The Punch, Femi Adesina, the special
adviser to the president on media and publicity maintained that no new information has been gotten regarding the whereabouts of the missing girls.
He said: “We stand by what the President said on the matter the last time he spoke on it, especially during the last media chat. “Whenever there is a development on the matter, we will make it known to Nigerians.” Recall that Buhari had during his last presidential media chat disclosed that security agencies in the country had no knowledge of the girls’ whereabouts. “There is no such intelligence reports of where those girls are physically are and in what condition they are in, but what we believe in from our intelligence is that they (their abductors) keep shifting them around so that they are not taken by a surprise until the girls are freed, and they are not being kept in one place,” he said. The president added that the federal government would negotiate with any credible leadership of the terrorist sect that could give information on the whereabouts of the girls. The girls, numbering over 200 were kidnapped by Boko Haram from Government Secondary School, Chibok in April 2014 during the administration of ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan. Giving his inaugural address during his swearing in on May 29, Buhari had said the war against terrorism could never be said to have been won without rescuing the Chibok girls. Meanwhile, Brig.-Gen. Rabe Abubakar, the acting director of defence information said the military was focused on defeating the dreaded sect and also ensure that those being held captive were released. According to him, the military has been recording success in the fight against insurgency and many people have been rescued. Dr Andrew Pocock, the former British high commissioner to Nigeria recently revealed that the United States and the United Kingdom knew the whereabouts of 80 of the Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram. He claimed that UK and the US surveillance spotted the girls shortly after they were abducted,  but experts felt nothing could be done as the terrorists used the girls as human shields and the risk in launching a rescue mission was great.