Ex-president Jonathan ignored Chibok girls for 19 days

Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan reportedly abandoned the over 200 Chibok secondary school girls for about 19 days after their abduction, it has emerged. According to Premium Times, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno state made this chilling revelation on Monday, March 28 during a visit of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo to the state on a two-day visit to the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID).
Shettima informed that Jonathan failed to call him or any official of the state government to make enquiry or empathise with the state over the incident. While eulogising Chief Obasanjo, the governor said he was confident that the abduction of the Chibok girls would have been handled differently were he (Obasanjo) in power at the time it happened. He said: “In our own case, Your Excellency, after the Chibok abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in April, 2014, it took 19 days for me to receive a call from the presidency.
“I brought this mainly to show the difference, because we will only appreciate scenarios when we make comparisons.” Speaking further on the virtues of Obasanjo, Shettima explained how he worked with Chief Audu Ogbeh and what the latter said about the ex-president.
“Your Excellency, Sir, I was privileged to have worked closely with Chief Innocent Audu Ogbeh as Honourary Adviser to me on Agriculture. He selflessly assisted us in fine-tuning our Agricultural programs from 2012 to 2015 which made him to frequent Maiduguri at the heat of the Boko Haram insurgency.
“I remember that in one of his visits, we had one conversation in 2014 after the Chibok schoolgirls abduction. I was actually lamenting to him on governance at the Federal level with relations to poor handling of the Boko Haram insurgency.
“As I was lamenting to him, Chief Ogbeh said something to me and I quote;
‘Look, I might have had some political difference with President Olusegun Obasanjo but to say it as it is, if Obasanjo had been President while this insurgency is happening in Borno and other parts of the northeast, you would have witnessed what responsive Leadership entails’.
“Chief Audu Ogbeh went further to say that from his point of view, His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was one of Nigeria’s most hard working President. He described President Obasanjo as a highly energized workaholic. Chief Ogbeh made these remarks as a leader in the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria at a time Baba Obasanjo was a PDP leader.
“Besides Ogbeh, I had a conversation with a former Governor who told me that while he was a sitting Governor during Baba Obasanjo’s regime as President, there was a time Baba called him countless number of times in one day to get update over a crisis that erupted in the Governor’s State. “Someone even told me that as President, Baba Obasanjo had phone numbers of traditional rulers and resident heads of security establishments in States that were prone to crisis and he sometimes spoke with them directly to get first hand information.
“Without crisis, he created time to call traditional rulers to make enquiries about communal stability, ethno-religious coexistence and community policing in order to forestall problems,” he said.
Obasanjo arrived early Monday morning and made straight for the government house to see the governor, it was his first visit to Borno government house since 1976. Speaking on this historical difference, Shettima, who counted himself lucky to host the ex-military leader, said:
“Your Excellency, Sir, majority of Nigerians salute you; we adore and respect you and we shall forever be grateful to you for standing for the unity, continued existence and the recovery of Nigeria when Nigerians needed you most.”
Meanwhile, reports emerged over the weekend that the Cameroonian army intercepted a suspected suicide bomber who claimed to be one of the Chibok girls abducted by the Boko Haram sect in April 2014.
Military sources said that two female bombers carrying explosives were caught by local self-defense forces in the village of Limani, in an area of northern Cameroon. The girls were then handed over to Cameroonian soldiers who are working alongside a multi-national force set up to end the insurgency.