Chibok community denies rejecting rebuilding of school
The Chibok community has denied rejecting the rebuilding of the Government Girls’ Secondary School, (GGSS), Chibok, Borno State, razed by Boko Haram insurgents, during the abduction of 219 school girls on April, 14, 2014.
This was disclosed by the Director of Publicity, Kibaki Area Development National Association, Dr. Manessah Allen, during the sit-out of the #Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG), a group crusading for the return of the abducted girls.
Allen said the rejection of the rebuilding of the school was by the Caretaker Chairman of Chibok Council Area, Mallam Ba’ana Lawan, and that it was not the position of the parents of the abducted girls and the entire Chibok community.
Allen noted that since the abduction of the girls, the school had been closed down, adding that most of the students from the school had been at home for nearly a year.
According to him, the community had been wallowing in poverty with no help from the government, noting that it wasn’t right to mortgage the lives of the people in the community.
Allen, however, frowned upon the timing of the rebuilding of the school, wondering why such was happening after 300 days of the incident.
“About the visit of Federal Government officials led by the Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, we think it is a bad timing. It would have come before now. ‘Why now?’ we keep asking. When the Chibok parents met the president, there were lots of promises, which I call false promises. Our girls have been abducted for over 300 days and the response of the government was late, but we will not, for these reasons, reject the rebuilding of the school,” Allen said.
He cited the case of a woman who had eight children in the school, one of whom was among those abducted.
“She will not for the fact that her daughter is not yet back, say no to the school. She needs her other seven children to go to school. It is out of place to say, we want our girls and reject the school,” he said.
