Tuesday, 22 April 2014

234 girls Not 85 Teen Girls are 'missing' from Nigerian school attacked last week by Boko Haram

Whats wrong with my country Nigeria?? I ask myself this question anytime I remember where am from. According to a report on Reuters, 234 girls instead of  105 as reported by the Nigerian information services are missing from the Boko haram attacked school. This is a significant difference that I feel can not have been overlooked by the government. It boils down to the fact that its a deliberate attempt to hoard the information so my question now is to what purpose?? According to the report;
Almost three times as many schoolgirls as previously thought were seized from an exam hall by violent Islamist extremists, it has been claimed.
A statement by officials had said that 85 girls aged 16-18, who were sitting a physics exam, were kidnapped from the school in Chibok, Nigeria last week.
But today the governor of the region, who visited the town today, said that grief-stricken parents told him officials had ignored them when drawing up the list of 85, and that in fact 234 girls had been taken.

 Security officials had warned Gov. Kashim Shettima that it was too dangerous for him to drive to Chibok, 80 miles from Maiduguri, the Borno state capital and birthplace of the Boko Haram terrorist network blamed for the abductions.
The discrepancy in the drastically different figures could not immediately be resolved.
Borno state education commission Musa Inuwo Kubo and the principal of the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School had initially said that 129 science students were at the school to write a physics exam when the abductors struck, after midnight on April 14.
 Twenty-eight pupils escaped from their captors between Tuesday and Friday. Then another 16 were found to be day scholars who had returned to their homes in Chibok before the attack. That left 85 missing students, according to school officials.
This latest confusion comes after the military had reported last week that all but eight of those abducted had been rescued - but then retracted the claim the following day.
Security sources have said they are in 'hot pursuit' of the abductors, but so far they have not rescued any of the girls and young women, aged between 16 and 18.
Parents and other town residents have joined the search for the students in the Sambisa Forest which borders Chibok town and is a known hideout for the militants.
The kidnappings are believed to have been carried out by Nigeria's Islamic extremist rebels, known as Boko Haram.
Boko Haram - the nickname means 'Western education is sinful' - is violently campaigning to establish an Islamic Shariah state in Nigeria, whose 170 million people are about half Muslim and half Christian.
Boko Haram has been abducting some girls and young women in attacks on schools, villages and towns but last week's mass kidnapping is unprecedented. The extremists use the young women as porters, cooks and sex slaves, according to Nigerian officials.
Boko Haram was on a rampage last week, staging four attacks in three days that began with a massive explosion during rush hour at a busy bus station Monday morning in Abuja, the capital in the center of the country, which killed at least 75 people and wounded 141.
Nigeria's military and government had claimed to have the militants on the run and contained in a remote northeast corner on the border with Cameroon.
But extremist attacks have increased in frequency and become ever deadlier this year with more than 1,500 people killed so far, compared to an estimated 3,600 between 2010 and 2013.
To be utterly sincere, I dont think this Government have what it takes to battle Boko haram, am not speaking from a political point rather from a realistic point. If you cant manage ordinary information of an already executed attack, how do hope to manage the information that will lead to stopping the attack.
It can never leave my mind that my President was partying lesst han 24 hours after a major attack on Nigeria capital and barely some hours after 234 young girls were kidnapped in his country.. its very sad.

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