Borno releases N150m to rehabilitate 53 girls, parents

Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, on yesterday said the initial doubt over the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls and the theory that the kidnap was staged managed by his government was as painful as the actual abduction.

He also said that the state government would spend N150m to rehabilitate the 53 students who escaped from their abductors and the parents of those still being held.

The governor said it was a sad tale that Nigeria pays more emphasis on politics than finding solutions to the nation’s problems.

 Responding to the address of the Chairman of the Presidential Fact Finding Committee on the abduction of Chibok schoolgirls, Brig.-Gen. Ibrahim Sabo (retd.), Shettima said, “I didn’t create Boko Haram, I inherited it in 2011 when I was sworn-in amidst near complete breakdown of security in Maiduguri, the largest and most populated part of the state. But I normally say that a leader is elected or appointed to solve problems, it doesn’t matter whether the leader created the problem or not. A leader is elected to find solution, this is governance. There is a whole difference between politics and governance.

“In politics, you tell the general public and victims about a problem, you tell them the gravity of the problem; and with emphasis, you tell them who to blame for it. But in governance, you identify a problem and work hard to solve it. Unfortunately for us in this country, we all appear to lay more emphasis on politics than on governance. The Chibok incident, for me, has grossly exposed our weighty weakness as leaders in terms of assuming our shared responsibilities.

He lamented that a former Minister, Mrs. Kema Chikwe, came out to cast doubt over the abduction of these schoolgirls. “That woman completely disregarded the sensitivity of that issue, the pains of the agonising parents and our pains as a government, to whom, the parents of these girls, cry out in desperation and unimaginable confusion and anguish.

“Every other unreasonable Nigerian that came to adopt that view, only anchored the unfortunate view that was first expressed by Mrs Kema Chikwe. Doubt over that abduction pained me as much as the incident itself. Doubt over that abduction pained me far more than the childish theory that as a government, we staged that abduction in order to create basis to stop the extension of emergency rule in Borno.”

He said that theory did not make the slightest sense, saying, if a government did not want extension of emergency and chose to fake happenings, the state government would rather deny that the abduction ever took place.

The governor, said he had approved N150m for the rehabilitation of the 53 girls who escaped from the Boko Haram captivity and for the assistance of the traumatised parents daughters are still held in captivity.

Earlier Brig.-Gen. Sabo had assured the state government that the committee was ready to carry on with the task with absolute patriotism and fear of God.

He condoled with the people and government of Borno State who have been traumatized as a result of the loses that have resulted from the Boko Haram insurgency over time.