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Abduction of policewomen is Chibok girls’ saga all over again, says BBOG

By Oludare Richards, Abuja
04 July 2017   |   4:15 am
The #BringBackOurGirls group has described the abduction of 16 policewomen by Boko Haram, from a security convoy of vehicles conveying military and police personnel, 30 kilometres from Maiduguri on the Maiduguri-Damboa federal highway as a painful sense of déjà vu.

Leader of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group, Oby Ezekwesili (right) and others at the main entrance to the Presidential Villa, Abuja. PHOTO: PHILIP OJISUA

The #BringBackOurGirls group has described the abduction of 16 policewomen by Boko Haram, from a security convoy of vehicles conveying military and police personnel, 30 kilometres from Maiduguri on the Maiduguri-Damboa federal highway as a painful sense of déjà vu.

The group said, in assessing how authorities have handled the incident, that it does appear that three years on, another Chibok Girls-like tragedy is happening all over again.
Recounting that on June 20, almost two weeks ago, the media widely reported that part of a security convoy of vehicles, which also had civilians, and personnel of Nigeria police travelling for the burial rites of a deceased police colleague was attacked by the terrorists.

In some of the reports, eyewitness accounts relayed that 16 women were abducted by the terrorists from among the burial convoy. The BBOG expressed its worry that 13 days after the reported tragedy, the Federal Government and the Military have maintained an eerie silence on the matter.
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The group lamented that the ominous silence is made more troubling when four days after the attack and alleged abduction of the women from the burial convoy, the Boko Haram terrorists released a video in which they took responsibility and paraded the women they claimed were the police women, victims of that attack.

“We also noted that it was four days after the unfortunate claim by the terrorists and more than one week after the incident that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) made its first statement.

“In said statement, it outrightly denied that any police personnel was abducted, that the women in the released video were not their staff although the statement confirmed that two (2) of their personnel were missing.

“For us the #BringBackOurGirls movement, there is a painful sense of déjà vu that it does appear that three years on, another #ChibokGirls-like tragedy is happening all over again”, the group said in a statement signed by Aisha Yesufu and Oby Ezekwesili.

It further stated that the similarity of the three-year-old episode seems to be replaying itself in the Wednesday, June 28, 2017 NPF statement on the alleged abduction of the policewomen.

“When the abduction happened in Chibok in 2014, some officials of the federal government did in fact deny that the school girls existed in the first place referring to their abduction as a scam, yet from media reports, the policewomen were said to be on a national assignment to bury their deceased colleague when eyewitnesses to their attack saw them taken away in a truck just like it happened to our Chibok Girls on that night of 14 April 2014.”

Whilst also recalling another incident which it said the Nigerian Air Force denied the 41-year-old Wing Commander Chimda Hedima after he was captured by terrorists and displayed in a video they released in 2014, the group demanded immediate reaction of the Presidency and the federal government to the cries of families of the alleged abducted policewomen and other citizens in the burial convoy that was attacked.

“The federal authorities cannot carry on repeating all the wrong approaches in dealing with victims of terrorism that it should have learned to handle differently over these many years.

“Therefore, our federal government must immediately provide answers to the whereabouts of the missing policewomen and their civilian counterparts who were part of the burial convoy,” it added.

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