•Residents condemn govt action

The three senators from Yobe, Senate Leader, Ahmad Lawan, Bukar Abba Ibrahim and Mohammed Hassan, yesterday, clashed at yesterday’s plenary, over Boko Haram’s  abduction of over 100 schoolgirls in Dapchi area of the state.

They clashed when Ibrahim raised a point of order to draw the attention of his colleagues to conflicting reports about the whereabouts of over 100 female students.

Trouble started after Lawan concluded his remarks and he hailed Governor Ibrahim Gaidam’s efforts on the crisis. His kinsman, Hassan, was infuriated and maintained that the governor failed in protecting the students

He recalled five attacks on public schools in the state in recent times and concluded that the governor had abdicated his duties as the chief security officer of the Boko Haram ravaged state.

Senator Abba Ibrahim backed Lawan and added that “President Muhammadu Buhari sent three of his most senior ministers to Yobe to continue reporting to him on regular basis and not a single person has so far been killed. The abduction is not yet confirmed. The ministers and military are on the ground.”

Adopting the two prayers of the motion, Senate, however, condemned the attack on the school and also, urged the federal government to quickly recover the girls so as not to repeat the issue of the Chibok girls’ experience of April 2014 in Borno State.

Back in Yobe, Dapchi residents were unhappy about the state government’s announcement on Wednesday night that some of the girls had been rescued and were with the military.

Yesterday, the governor went to Dapchi and reportedly pleaded with affected family members and the people of the community to keep praying to God for the release of their daughters. He reiterated no girl has been released.

Abdul Dapchi, a resident, who was at the meeting wih the governor, told newsmen Gaidam lost control of the crowd immediately he confessed no girl had been released.

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“We were all angry. How could they have deceived us all along?” said Dapchi, whose two sisters were among the abducted girls,

“It is not true that some girls were rescued. About 94 of the girls are still missing, including two of my daughters,” said Modu, a personal assistant to a commissioner in Gaidam’s cabinet. 

His daughters, Aisha, 18 and Falmata, 17 both SSSII students are among the missing. “No one can actually say the whereabouts of the girls, they have disappeared completely without any trace,” Modu insisted.

The European Union (EU), has also condemned the abduction. In a statement by the EU spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ray, in Abuja the EU said: “Targeting children and abducting young girls as they seek to attend school is an attack on our common humanity.”

It expressed solidarity with the affected families and the people of Nigeria.

On its part, UNICEF said teachers and school children are still traumatised by the eight years of Boko Haram conflict in the northeast states,.

Its Chief Field Officer, Borno State Office, Geoffrey Ijumba, said “a lot of teachers and school children have experienced blood, killing and destruction.”

In a separate development, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) disagreed with security agencies over claims that 48, out of the 94 abducted schoolgirls, have been rescued.

Speaking at the commencement of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) meeting in Abuja, yesterday, the party’s National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, accused the federal government of “misleading Nigerians that some of the kidnapped girls from Yobe have been rescued, but, we have authentic information that the girls have not been rescued.”