A call has gone to the Nigerian State to invite the United Nations to institute a transparent and fool-proof investigation to ascertain the fate of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted in April 2014 by Boko Haram terrorists.

A leading non-governmental organisation, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), made the call, expressing consternation and shock that both President Muhammadu Buhari and erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo, only at the weekend in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, made contradictory claims on the disappearance of the school girls widely believed to have been kidnapped and converted to sexual slaves by the armed Islamists operating from the North-East of Nigeria.

HURIWA, which stated this in a statement jointly signed by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, recalled that while President Buhari pledged before a Nigerian audience in London, United Kingdom on Friday, to rescue alive all the girls taken forcefully from Chibok Girls’ School by Boko Haram terrorists, the former president, who is a political ally of President Buhari, stated with finality that it would amount to telling lies if anybody still promises to bring back the Kidnapped Chibok girls.

HURIWA said it has found out from a broad range of sources, both in the traditional mainstream media and the social and online media, that some significant percentage of Nigerians from the southern segment of the country see the whole odyssey and stories woven around the kidnapping of the Chibok secondary school girls as a well-choreographed script by the political hawks within the northern establishment who wanted the then President Goodluck Jonathan completely de-marketed, disgraced as a weak leader. Therefore, this created the desired loophole progressively, for the emergence of ex-General Buhari from Katsina State as the civilian president of Nigeria, as a way of wrestling political power from the South, back to the North.

“There is a school of thought that believes that the whole story of some school girls kidnapped and couldn't be rescued by the immediate past administration was a scam, and a well-coordinated political plot to oust the then president, after portraying his government as weak and indecisive. Such persons say the story of the kidnapped Chibok girls was made-up and, so, when the objective of dethroning the former President Jonathan has long been achieved, those who hatched the plots are busy dishing out discordant tunes to retain the deep-rooted confusion among Nigerians.”

The rights group said it is imperative that all the conspiracy theories swirling around the kidnapped Chibok girls could be laid to rest finally by inviting a non-partisan and an objective institution like the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to investigate whether the incidence of kidnapping of school girls in this large-scale ever happened; and to appropriately proffer the best way to put measures in place to forestall future occurrence of such a dastardly criminal act of depravity in such a horrendous level ever again in Nigeria.

HURIWA expressed shock that even in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where armed Islamic terrorism took roots and is rife, a well-coordinated kidnapping of school girls has never been recorded in such an unbelievable magnitude and amazing scale, as we were told, happened in Chibok.

HURIWA noted: “The UN should be invited to probe all the stories around this matter with the aim of once-and-for-all letting the cat out of the bag, so Nigerians and the rest of the world is made aware of evidence-based established narrative around the matter of kidnapping of Chibok school girls. It would be recalled that when the story of this kidnapping of Chibok school girls came up, the international community was genuinely touched and world leaders and their spouses openly wept. Celebrities around the world were not left out in the celebrated condemnation of the kidnapping of Chibok school girls. Since the several layers of conspiracy theories still exist – that the incident never happened in the first place - it would be great to let the global body investigate this matter and bring out all the dimensions of the scenarios. Enough of this cacophonous confusion and double speaks coming from Nigerian political leaders.”

•Photo shows UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.

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