The Senate Thursday resolved to invite the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno and other security chiefs to brief it on the steps taken so far to secure the release of the Chibok girls.
The Senate also commended the Bring Back Our Girls group for being in the forefront and unrelenting in their demand for the release of the girls, who were abducted by Boko Haram on April 14, 2014.
The upper legislative chamber also tasked the security agencies to do everything humanly possible to ensure that the Chibok girls are released.
The resolutions followed the adoption of a motion by Senator Dino Melaye (APC/Kogi West) and three others entitled “Abduction of Chibok school girls-two years after”.
The motion elicited angry reactions from senators who felt that two years was long enough for the government to have recovered the school girls.
Senator Melaye lamented the plight of the girls and their parents, saying that the Federal Government cannot be said to have succeeded until the girls are rescued.
He said: “We cannot succeed as a government until those girls are released. Getting back the over 200 Chibok school girls into the society is important and a must for our security agencies.
“The abduction of over 200 girls by Boko Haram has wrongly affected us as a people as could be seen in the international condemnation of the government’s slow reaction to this unprecedented outrage committed against Nigerian womanhood. Never before has such criminal viciousness been perpetrated on Nigerian womanhood”.
Melaye noted that Thursday “makes it 730 days, 17520 hours and 1,051 minutes that our Chibok school girls have been under captivity. It will be recalled the night of 14-15 April, 2014, 276 girls were kidnapped from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, the responsibility for the abduction was claimed by Boko Haram. Luckily, 57 of the school girls managed to escape making 219 still missing”.
The senator noted that aside the propaganda videos created by Boko Haram, none of the girls has been sighted and the families of the missing girls have been traumatized because of their missing daughters.
In his contribution, Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio (PDP/Akwa Ibom North-East), recalled that Melaye and some other members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) used the abduction of the Chibok school girls to win last year’s general elections.
Akpabio wondered why those who led protests against the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan to rescue the girls have suddenly kept mum.
He said, “I remember in 2014, Dino Melaye used to wear T-shirt and he led the protest to ensure that the abducted school girls were released.
“He was always at the National Fountain to lead a protest against the government. He eventually cashed in on it and won election to the Senate. Other people in APC also did the same thing”.
Some other Senators, who also supported the motion, asked the federal government to go beyond the yearly ritual of celebrating the anniversary of the abduction of the girls.
The lawmakers charged government to explore every available avenue to ensure that the girls are rescued.
