A growing apprehension has gripped key campaigners of the #BringBackOurGirls coalition over the increasing use of teenage girls as suicide bombers by the Boko Haram insurgent group.
On Monday alone two female suicide bombers struck in different parts of Kano, killing and injuring many on a day Muslim faithful thronged the prayer grounds to observe the Eid-el-Fitri.
Members of the #BringBackOurGirls group, including one of its coordinators, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, raised the alarm that the continued incarceration of the abducted girls in Boko Haram’s custody could spell doom.
The former education minister stated that the Federal Government must not “move on,” as the Chibok girls may well be indoctrinated or coerced into being used as suicide bombers.
“It feels like eternity since April 14 when our girls lost their freedom. How can we move on like that? This new trend and serial pattern of female suicide bombers surely should particularly worry us.
“Female suicide bombers are again and again becoming the trend and our Chibok girls are still in the enemy’s den. It worries me stiff. Are we thinking? Our Chibok girlsreally need to be rescued from the clutches of evil.
“We must all not stop praying and demanding that the FG acts for results. We have no apology for being agitated. We have nothing to defend for crying out for their rescue,” she wrote on her Twitter page.
Another key member of the coalition, Bukky Shonibare, stated that the number of days the abducted girls had spent in Boko Haram’s custody was enough for them to have been indoctrinated.
According to Shonibare, it is now increasingly dangerous for the Federal Government that boasted of knowing the location of the girls to leave them with their captors.
“Seems abducted women that were undergoing indoctrination and brainwashing while in hostage for years are now being sent out as suicide bombers. However, 100 days is long enough for anyone’s ideologies or principles to be distorted, especially teenagers whose values are still being shaped.
“To know the possible impact of 100+ days on one’s ideologies, psychologists say it takes only 30 days! It is now increasingly dangerous to leave those girls there. Whatever is it they are doing may be counterproductive.
“They (Chibok girls) can be indoctrinated, brainwashed, or put under duress to do this. In the face of death, no sensible human will be a ‘willing participant.’ There’ll definitely be an element of coercion,” Shonibare tweeted. – Punch.
