The Fact-finding Committee on the Abduction of the Chibok School Girls recently submitted its report to President Goodluck Jonathan. The committee, headed by Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo (rtd), was set up on May 2 this year to investigate the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping of about 300 girls from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, by members of Boko Haram. Even though the report is yet to be officially released, the contents are already spilled across the streets.
Unfortunately, the 45-page report said nothing new as it merely confirmed what is already in the public domain: that some 276 schoolgirls were originally abducted out of which 57 escaped. Indeed, there are worrying gaps in the report as the committee offers nothing remotely satisfactory about the security situation at the time the insurgents invaded the school, especially with regard to the arrangement put in place by the state government (if any) in view of the earlier fears raised by the examination body, the West African Examination Council (WAEC). And even more, the report failed to clarify whether all 395 girls of the school were present in the hostel on the night of the attack. The WAEC had said that some candidates did not show up for any of the examinations held before the attack. Were these students in the school premises when the insurgents arrived? Who are they and why didn’t they turn up for the papers?
Moreover, the report failed to address how such a large number of girls were moved out of the vicinity in the dead of the night. How many vehicles were involved? Was there any breakdown on the way as speculated? How did the lucky girls escape? Worrying questions for a committee that took almost two months at public expense to sit and collate its findings.
However, many did not expect any ground-breaking findings from a committee that ought not to have been set up if the federal government was alive to its responsibility. It is therefore little surprise that much of the information in the presidential committee’s report is a rehash of what is already in the public space.
The word out there is that the federal government may have been displeased with the report because it contradicted its pre-determined expectations. It is noteworthy that the committee was set up more than two weeks after the abduction on April 14. It did seem at its inauguration that government was sceptical of the abduction, whether it really took place or it was an extension of some partisan political squabbles.
Even if the presidential report has finally confirmed the fact that there was indeed a kidnap and the number of pupils involved, it is yet to lay to rest the parental, national and international anguish about the Chibok girls. Now three months after the girls were abducted, there is still some strange silence about their whereabouts and what option the government has decided to take to bring them home.
About a week ago, some parents and community leaders of the adopted girls held a press conference in Abuja to express their frustrations and depth of despair. Some of the parents of the seized girls have reportedly passed on, perhaps due to the tension in their hearts and compounded perhaps by the unrelenting and vicious attacks by the insurgents on Chibok’s surrounding communities.
Even if the report of the presidential fact- finding committee ends up gathering dust like many of the reports of committees set up by this administration, ostensibly to buy time whenever it doesn’t want to take action on an issue, Nigerians will continue to demand of the federal government: how long will the agony of the abducted Chibok girls and those of their parents last?
