Chibok girls are living in bunkers — Gov Shettima

Firstclass newsline learnt that the Kassim Shettima,borno state
governor said yesterday that there was every tendency that the female
students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, abducted by
members of the Boko Haram sect, in April 2014, were being held in
bunkers, inside Sambisa Forest.
To this end, he has asked the military, which is currently combing the
forest not only to fish out members of the sect but to also liberate
the over 200 girls.
Shettima, spoke in Abuja, while presenting a paper at a two-day post
election conference on security and governance, organized by the
Savanna Centre, a Non Governmental Organisation, NGO, established by
former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Prof. Ibrahim
Gambari.
The governor, who was represented at the occasion by the Secretary,
Borno Elders Forum, Dr Bulama Mala Gubio, said the sect, having
operated in the large expanse of the forest for so many years
unchallenged, were able to build a bunker, large enough to accommodate
many people in the area.
He said, "We are suspecting that Chibok girls are living with the
insurgents in bunkers, I think the military must carry out their
operations beyond the surface earth. They (Boko Haram) were also known
to have dug tunnels to enable them move from house to house. So,
having been left unchallenged for such a long time, such possibility
cannot be ruled out which poses serious obstacles within the forest,
"the governor added.
Speaking further, Shettima said: "The insurgents used their bases in
the Sambisa Forest to launch deadly attacks and make quick retreat to
their base which enabled them capture and take over control of all the
local government areas bordering Nigeria with Cameroon, Chad and
Niger, thus effectively cutting off the three neighbouring countries
thereby declaring what they assumed was their independent territory
(caliphate)."
The governor also said unless Sambisa Forest was completely and
effectively rid of the terrorists by the military, any reconstruction
and rehabilitation carried out in the North East region would turn out
to be an exercise in futility.
"Unless and only if the Sambisa Forest is effectively recovered from
the terrorists shall we think of defeating the Boko Haram and begin
to embark on a holistic approach for the reconstruction and
rehabilitation of the North East. In fact, at several stages the Borno
State Government had intervened to reconstruct destroyed schools,
health centres, homes, markets and so on, only for the insurgents to
attack and destroy them again, "he noted.
The governor also disclosed that Boko Haram killed over 300,000
persons in the region, contrary to the 13,000 dead figure he said, was
being bandied by the media.He disclosed that Borno State alone, has
so far lost over 70,000 people in the six-year old insurgency.
He attributed the success of the Boko Haram activities in the North
East to what he called "the underfunding of the military".
Governor Shettima accused President Goodluck of abandoning the region
to its fate, and instead, preferred to spend the money he would have
spent on the maintenance of security in the area to frivolities,
especially the entertainment industry.
Governor Shettima specifically said in spite of the insurgency that
ravaged the North East for six years, all the president could do was
to send a meager N200 million to Borno State for security, disclosing
that the state government, on its own, spent N600 million out of its
lean resources and allocations to maintain the same security.
"As a government, we have spent over N600 million but all we have
received from the Federal Government is N200 million. The same Federal
Government has spent over N2 billion as loan to dancers
(entertainers)", he said
Shettima added that contrary to the claims of the military of
successfully liberating the major parts of the North East, a large
portion of the area was still being controlled by the insurgents
Firstclassnewsline.net