The protest staged by members of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) advocacy group on Wednesday was halted by the Nigerian Police.
Members of the group were marching on Nigeria’s presidential villa on Wednesday when the security officials stopped them.
The group said in a statement that President Muhammadu Buhari has done little to give them hope that the remaining Chibok girls will be rescued from their abductors.
“The advent of the Muhammadu Buhari Administration had brought hope with a spate of rescues. Sadly that enthusiasm has been diminished by an apparent complacency to complete the task at hand,” the group said.
The group recounted, “During the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, our advocacy was treated with scorn instead of focusing on measures to rescue the girls from the terrorists.”
BBOG urged President Buhari to focus on governance and expedite the rescue of the Chibok schoolgirls, including Leah Sharibu.
Although the Nigerian government had said it was winning the war terrorism, the group noted that it was evident that the insurgency was far from over.
The group added that issues of welfare, non-payment of stipends, inadequate manpower, and poor intelligence were affecting the fighting capabilities of the security forces in the North-East against the insurgency group.
BBOG also accused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of not doing enough to rescue their workers abducted by Boko Haram in March 2018.
Boko Haram had in October killed an ICRC aide worker Hauwa Liman after the ultimatum issued to the Nigerian government elapsed.
“We believe that if these three ladies were foreign nationals, the handling of the situation by both organisations would have been more proactive. There must be a greater commitment on the part of both organisations beyond issuing press statements,” BBOG said.
BBOG urged the ICRC and UNOCHA to liaise more effectively with the Federal Government to ensure that the surviving aide worker in hostage, Alice Nggadah, would not be killed by the insurgents.
