a year after

The Bring Back Our Girls movement has
lamented the inability of the President

Muhammadu Buhari administration to meet any
of its demands, a year after its first parley with
the president.
In a statement read Friday during a special sit-
out in Abuja to evaluate its achievements one
year after engaging with the president, BBOG
said it is extremely disappointing that none of
the five demands has been completed.
“On 8th July 2015, the #BringBackOurGirls
movement, parents of our abducted #ChibokGirls
and representatives of the Chibok community
had an engagement with the new President,
Muhammadu Buhari. This was necessitated by
the need to establish fact, the urgency of our
cause and dispel misconceptions about our
movement, especially considering the treatment
we had received from the preceding
administration. At the time of that engagement,
our 219 girls had been in captivity for 450 days
and the President acknowledged government
failure with regards to the rights of our girls and
victims of the insurgency.
“As part of our submissions to the President, we
presented Our crowd-sourced Citizens’ Solution
to End Terrorism, Verification, Authentication and
Reunification System (VARS), and a List of
Demands”, the group said in the statement which
w as jointly signed by Dr Oby Ezekwesili and
Aisha Yesufu.
Its initial demands were the implementation of
the Verification, Authentication and Reunification
System VARS, Protocol of Engagement with the
Citizens among others.
“We proposed that a team be tasked with the
credible implementation of VARS. The primary
task of the team was to work with every
abducted victim’s family and community to
accurately ascertain the true identity of such
individuals. Following their accurate
identification, the comprehensive program for
Recovery, Rehabilitation, Resettlement and
Reintegration was to be made available to them.
It was also supposed to entail the setting up of a
Missing Persons’ Register.
“We requested that the President direct relevant
Government representatives to work with the
BBOG Family to commence work immediately on
an Accountability Matrix, which will define the
protocol for obtaining and sharing information
with citizens. We also suggested a monthly
meeting between security operatives and
community stakeholders in communities most
affected by these acts of violence e.g. Chibok,
Gwoza and Bama. We believed at that time that
it would encourage much needed collaboration
and information sharing to bridge the identified
communication gap.
“We requested that the President direct the
establishment of a Commission charged with the
task of transparently investigating and reporting
on the security lapses that caused their
successful abduction and the operational
leadership failures that led to their long captivity
in terrorist enclave. This Commission was also to
review the allegations of corruption within our
security services that has hindered its capacity
to perform effectively
“We requested that the President direct that the
Report of the Presidential Fact Finding
Committee of the Chibok Girls and the
Presidential Committee on Security Challenges in
the North East be made public immediately.
“We suggested that the Government begin, in
earnest, a holistic process of proper sensitization
and enlightenment to curb this trend of youth
radicalization and extremism. The BBOG Family
indicated willingness to work with the
Government to design the programme. We
departed with the hope of re-engaging the
administration towards setting clear timelines
and deliverables for the five requests.
“A year later, it is extremely disappointing that
none of the five demands has been completed.
Specifically, a failure to implement VARS means
we still do not have a cohesive system of
identifying liberated citizens or even a database
of those affected. Thanks to an initial
partnership between the #BringBackOurGirls
movement and the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC), a coalition of Government
Agencies led by the NHRC has begun the initial
processes towards the establishment of a
National Missing Persons’ Register. We
acknowledge this, but ask that the work is fast-
tracked and completed for the benefit of
displaced Nigerians.
“This morning, a year after our engagement and
close to six months since the President directed
the setting up of a committee to carry out
investigation into the abduction of our girls, we
read of an approval of the members of the
committee. Again the lack of urgency in the
dispatch of responsibilities towards the rescue of
our girls is alarming.
“At this rate, it begs the questions – when will
the committee be constituted? When will they be
mobilized to start work? What time line will they
work with and the reports submitted? Under what
timeline will the government study and act on
the report? What does this mean for our Chibok
Girls who do not have the luxury of time and
whose plight worsens with every passing hour,
minute and second?
“The non-release of the Report of the
Presidential Fact Finding Committee of the
Chibok Girls and the Presidential Committee on
Security Challenges in the North East is also
unacceptable. We demand an immediate release
of these reports as their importance for lessons
learned about the abductions and insurgency in
general cannot be overemphasized. We reiterate
our position that sensitive areas with
implications for national security as repeatedly
mentioned can be blotted out of the public
document. Global best practice supports this.
These lessons learned while providing
information to the public will justify the need for
expenditure of public resources, provide metrics
for scrutiny and acceptance of the new report
and factual evidence for the prosecution of all
benefactors of the diversion of funds for arms
procurement”, BBOG noted.