Dapchi abduction: BBOG, Falana serve FG 7-day notice for criminal negligence
- The federal government have been issued a 7-day ultimatum by the Bring Back Our Girls group
- The group's leader, Obiageli Ezekwesili, the federal government was being sued for criminal negligence which led to the abduction of the Dapchi girls
-She said the federal government will be sued within seven days if it fails to provide answers to 14 question raised by it
The Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group has served the federal government and President Muhammadu Buhari with a seven-day notice over the abduction of Dapchi schoolgirls.
The group said it will commence legal action against the federal government for criminal negligence which made room for the abduction of the schoolgirls by the Boko Haram terrorist group.
Speaking on Tuesday, March 13, during a rally by the BBOG, the group's lawyer, Femi Falana, said the Nigerian constitution has been breached by the federal government.
Falana said: "Subsection 14 of section 2 of the Nigerian constitution provides that the security and welfare of the Nigerian people shall be the primary purpose of governance. Two, Section 35 of the Constitution provides for the right to personal liberty, in other words, no citizen of Nigeria can be abducted or seized or even detained illegally without a reaction by the government.
"So that duty has been breached in the case of the Chibok as well as the Dapchi girls; and why it is worse in this case as it has been made clear in the press conference is that, having regards to the facts and circumstances of the development in that part of the country, it is intolerable, it is unacceptable that the same manner of abduction took place."
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The senior lawyer said investigation by the group has revealed that there was no security for the schools in the northeast, just like what happened in 2014 when over 200 Chibok schoolgirls were abducted.
Falana decried the consistent inability of the Nigerian government to punish impunity, stating that the ripple effect entail repetition of crisis that could have been avoided.
"Now we are being told that a committee has been set up by the same people, to do what, it can only be do cover up. If you want to challenge what has been done, by now we expect the government to have fired those who were responsible," the senior lawyer added.
Also, the group said it is utterly shocking and disappointing that another terrorist abduction of schoolgirls is being alleged by the federal government to have taken place under its watch.
BBOG said: "How terribly embarrassing it is that within four years since the abduction of 276 ChibokGirls in April 2014 our country is again in the news for tragic reasons.
"The abduction of 110 Secondary school girls of Government Girls Science and Technical Secondary School, Dapchi in Yobe State on February 19, 2018 is the worst form of a deja vu that our movement could have ever imagined at this time in our nearly four-year-old advocacy."
The BBOG further raised 14 question the federal government must answer on the recent abduction or face legal action within seven days from Tuesday, March 13.
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Read BBOG's questions to FG below:
1. How was a terrorist group that the Federal Government has, over the last one year, and in fact only last week, informed the Nigerian Public “it has 'completely defeated”; still able to successfully launch an attack and abduct 110 schoolgirls in their school without any counteraction by the Nigeria military? How? How?
What happened to Early Warning Signal System as part of security architecture for areas like Dapchi in the theatre of war? We ask for #TheTruthAndNothingButTheTruth.
2. How could a school in northeast Nigeria - located in one of the three most terrorism-affected states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa - be so negligently abandoned without any form of security and surveillance and left vulnerable to the attack of February 19, 2018?
What happened to the Safe School Initiative that was signed on by the federal government in 2014 and to which it committed $10 million alongside other donations by the several donors, including the international community?
3. Why was there at first a denial of the abduction of our #DapchiGirls by officials of government? Where and how did the falsehood that no abduction took place at the time of the attack originate thereby leaving enough time for the abductors to succeed in disappearing with 110 school girls? Why did this deliberate attempt at a cover up of a humongous tragedy happen at all?
4. Following on 3 above, what was the basis and source of the false information to parents and the public that about half of our 110 #DapchiGirls had been rescued and in military custody when the government knew it to be lie?
5. Damaturu, the Yobe State capital, is only 110km from Dapchi; so we wonder why the governor, Ibrahim Geidam, failed to immediately travel to Dapchi for accurate information on the tragedy that occurred at the school?
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What prevented the Federal Government military and security teams within Dapchi area from acting swiftly?
6. On what basis, and at whose instruction, was the Military withdrawn from Dapchi, and to whom did they hand over? Where is the evidence of a handover and to which equivalent force was the responsibility given?
7. How was it that the terrorists carried out their activity for hours unchallenged by forces of the federal government? Can we not assume a connivance between the abductors and all those in the military and security command with responsibilities for the Dapchi, Yobe state area?
8. How was it that 110 children were transported in a convoy of vehicles for more than twenty four hours over distance of hundreds of kilometers without their abductors encountering any Nigerian Military or police security roadblocks?
9. Why was there no air surveillance by the Nigeria Air Force which is still at the battle front? If any, how did the Nigerian Air Force fail to track the movement of the terrorists motorcade as they made away with our schoolgirls?
What happened to the recently commissioned Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) said to have been procured for such tracking purpose? What happened to our Intelligence assets - satellite links and military aircraft - that were procured to prevent and abort such scale of elaborate attack by terrorists?
10. Does the federal government fail to see how underwhelming its recent announcement of a committee to interrogate the Dapchi abduction is so much so that it only elicited tired yawns among members of the Nigerian public?
What is the worth of a committee of members of security establishments that failed to prevent the operation that led to the abduction of our DapchiGirls?
Why is another committee necessary when the federal government has blatantly refused to publish or act on the reports of previous committees like the June 2014 General M. Sabo Presidential Committee on Abduction of ChibokGirls?
What happened to the committee announced on 14 January 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to again look into the abduction of our #ChibokGirls? Has that Committee ever met? What were its findings?
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11. Where is evidence of what constitutes a result-focused and sustained search and rescue operation by the federal government? Did the federal government not learn at all from the failures of its response to ChibokGirls abduction?
Is there currently a multinational sustained search and rescue operation launched for our DapchiGirls by the federal government or will that wait until after the anodyne committee it set up submits a report of its findings?
Have the federal government constituted a crack team to find and bring back our 112 ChibokGirls and their 110 DapchiGirls peers?
Has the federal government sought the support of countries with superior intelligence and rescue assets?
Again we ask, what should any reasonable person expect from the painfully familiar bureaucratic committee of the federal government of Nigeria that appears to be the only tangible measure the government has so far taken concerning DapchiGirls?
12. How does President Muhammadu Buhari justify the fact that only a few days after the abduction of 110 Dapchi school girls as a result of the gross negligence of his government, he was busy publicly politicking with his allies, seemingly giving priority to his re-election bid while 110 parents were wailing for their children?
Was it that the President had not been informed of the tragedy at that time, or that there was hardly any concern for the fate of the abducted school girls as has been the case in all other tragedies that have happened under his watch?
13. When shall President Muhammadu Buhari address the parents of DapchiGirls and the Nigerian Public on the plans of his federal government to immediately bring back the missing school girls?
When shall the president provide progress report on the plans of his government to bring back our remaining 112 ChibokGirls before April 14, 2014 which is the 4th anniversary of their abduction?
14. Finally, we suspect that there is a deliberate high level attempt to cover up the actions and inaction that led to the abduction of our 110 #DapchiGirls on the 19th February, 2018. We have seen the canvass and trail of contradictory statements and media spinning.
So we ask the federal government why all these lies? Why is there so much falsehood around this tragedy? Why the cover up?
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"While we wait for the federal government’s response to our fourteen questions, our movement - #BringBackOurGirls - hereby issues a 7-day (one-week) notice to the federal government to without further delay bring back our 112 #ChibokGirls and the 110 #DapchiGirls failure of which shall necessitate," the BBOG concluded.
Legit.ng earlier reported that some parents of the girls abducted in Dapchi on Tuesday, March 13, commended the president for considering a negotiation option with the terrorists group.
The parents appealed to the president not to use military force as a means of rescuing the abducted schoolgirls.
They said the option of a negotiation for the release of the girls have raised their hopes on the safe return of their daughters.
Boko Haram Kidnappings: Will Buhari bring back Dapchi Girls? - Legit.ng TV
Source: Legit.ng
