UK group expresses concern over fate of abducted Chibok school girls

United Kingdom group, IA-Foundation has again expressed its concern over the continued holding of more than 100 Chibok school girls, eight years after about 270 of the girls were abducted.

The girls were abducted on April 14, 2014 at Chibok community in northeast Nigeria, in a depressing incident that elicited spontaneous condemnation by the international community.

Speaking to newsmen at a forum to mark eight years of the abduction on Friday in Abuja, the Chief Executive Officer of IA-Foundation, Mrs Ibironke Adeagbo, said that nothing had changed on the fate of the girls still in the custody of the abductors.

She expressed her disappointment that the girls were still being held by their abductors almost a decade after they were seized by terrorists.

“The Chibok school girls’ abduction remains an open wound begging for closure in the conscience of our nation,’’ Adeagbo stated.

Nigeria has been contending with the activists of terrorists, including the dreaded Boko Haram group, which has been locked in a bloody conflict with the Federal Government since 2009.

Boko Haram has killed more than 3,000 people in Africa’s most populous nation and displaced over three million people since it launched its deadly campaign 13 years ago.

The group has repeatedly abducted school children, especially girls in a bid to stop the girls from going to school to acquire western education.

Adeagbo described the development as worrisome, pleading with the Federal Government to take measures to stop the activities of bandits and end abductions of citizens.

She re-stated that the abduction of school children posed an unimaginable threat to the future of the country, pleading that Nigeria should seek external help to end the problem.

Adeagbo, whose group has shown unrelenting commitment to changing the human condition of less-privileged children in Nigeria said that government must act fast to save the future of education in the country.

Records show that up to 1,436 school children and 17 teachers have been abducted in Nigeria since December 2020 with about 16 of the children losing their lives.

The Federal Government has however, risen to the challenge, clamping down on the terrorists and killing thousands of them over the years.

The terrorists are also active in other African countries, including Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire, among others.