Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has debunked fake stories in the social media alleging a top level conspiracy that stage-managed the abduction of Dapchi schoolgirls on 19 February.
Mohammed spoke in Lagos today in response to all the cynical and skeptical remarks and fake news in social media since the abduction and return of scores of Dapchi schoolgirls by Boko Haram insurgents.
“There was no conspiracy anywhere. The intention of those behind the disinformation and fake news is to cause disaffection between Christians and Muslims, and between Southerners and Northerners,” Mohammed said.
The minister restated that the schoolgirls were freed as a result of intense backchannel engagement with Boko Haram. “This was done in concert with a friendly country, international organization and trusted facilitators, he said.
” A total of 111 girls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary and Technical College (GGSTC) in Dapchi on 19 Feb. 2018. That means one student was not captured on the list of 110 abducted students that was compiled by the school, on the basis of which the Federal Government gave the number of abducted schoolgirls as 110.
“Also kidnapped were two other persons, who are not students of the college. They include a primary school boy who came to the school to sell pure water and another primary school girl. That brings the total number of abducted persons on that day to 113.
“As I have said at many fora, we neither paid ransom nor swapped any Boko Haram member to secure the release of the girls. This is a fact, irrespective of how a section of the press has tried to spin the story.
“The insurgents brought the girls back to the location of the kidnapping themselves as an apparent gesture of goodwill, following relentless efforts by the Government to find long-lasting solutions to the conflict.
“Unknown to many, we have been in wider cessation-of-hostility talks with the insurgents for some time now. The talks helped to secure the release of the police officers’ wives and the University of Maiduguri lecturers recently. And the talks did not stop thereafter.
“Therefore, we were able to leverage on the wider talks when the Dapchi girls were abducted. As I said earlier, the insurgents decided to return the girls to where they picked them from as a goodwill gesture. All they demanded was a ceasefire that will grant them a safe corridor to drop the girls. This is not new. Even in larger war situations, safe corridors are usually created for humanitarian and other purposes. Consequently, a week-long ceasefire was declared, starting from Monday, 19 March. That is why the insurgents were able to drop the girls. This counters the conspiracy theories being propounded in some quarters concerning why it was so easy for the insurgents to drop off the girls without being attacked by the military.”