MORE FACTS ABOUT THE TRAGIC EVENTS AT CHIBOK - Femi Fani-Kayode

MORE FACTS ABOUT THE TRAGIC EVENTS AT CHIBOK 

By Femi Fani-Kayode

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has told us that 90 per cent of the girls that were abducted at Chibok were christians. The President himself alluded to this yesterday during his media chat when he said that ''the majority'' of girls that were abducted were christians.

It has also been brought to my attention that the majority of the girls that either ''escaped'' or were released by their abductors were muslims.

It has also been brought to my attention that the Governor of Borno state refused to accept the counsel and abide by the directives of WAEC that the exams should not take place in Chibok due to the precarious security situation and instead he insisted that the exams should take place there and that he would guarantee the security of the children.

It has also been brought to my attention, based on the testimony of one of the girls that ''escaped'' that the girls that have been kidnapped are being raped up to 15 times a day by their captors and that those amongst them that have refused to convert to islam are having their throats cut. (see today's Vanguard Newspaper, pg. 8)

It has also been brought to my attention that two of the ladies that met with the First Lady yesterday and that held themselves out as representatives of the families of the abducted children did not in fact have any link with the children or their families at all and hence they were arrested for impersonation.

It has also been brought to my attention that the soldiers that were guarding the school in Chibok were redeployed at the last minute just before Boko Haram launched their attack and abducted the children.

These facts are all relevant and the picture of what really happened at Chibok and what is really going on now is getting clearer by the day. Ordinarily whether the children are christians or muslims really should not matter because, regardless of their faith, we want them all back and we must fight for them all.

However the fact that 90 per cent of them are christian adds a sinister and frightening dimension to the whole horrific episode and it is glaring evidence of the fact that christian girls are now being targetted by the islamists and that those girls are being forcefully converted to islam and being turned into sex slaves.

I am one of those that believes that the Federal Government has failed woefully in their primary duty to protect the Nigerian people and I have enunciated that position more than anyone else in this nation over the last three years. However we need to understand that this matter goes beyond politics and whether you are for or against the President.

It goes beyond whether you are in APC, PDP, APGA, Labour or UPN. Regardless of which side of the political divide we stand, we all have a duty to get to the bottom of the matter and find out what is really going on. We must join hands with all men and women of goodwill and together we must fight this insidious evil.

To be sure there is only one thing worse than failing to protect your people and that is when you organise people to use religion as a political tool and you kill, abduct and maim them in an attempt to change the status qou and cow the Nigerian people into submission. That is what those that are the secret supporters and sponsors of Boko Haram are doing.

What is going on is bloody, brutal, deep, dark and sinister and it is a conspiracy of monuemental proportions which we have all fallen victim to. It is left for the President and his team to rise up to the occassion, tell the Nigerian the bitter truth about all that is going on behind the scenes, remove the kid gloves, get real and fight the Haramists and their sponsors with all he has got.

If he refuses to do this or if he is cowered into not doing so by the moderate voices that are around him he can be rest assured that he will go down in history as the last President of a united Nigeria. I have little doubt that he knows who those that are behind Boko Haram are- it is now time for him to expose them and deal with them in a brutal and savage manner.

It is time for war. It is time to lock up and interogate all those that he suspects may be linked to the terrorists. It is time for him to use every method known to man to fight the insugency including better intelligence gathering, black ops, wet boys, covert operations and co-operation with various foreign and international intelligence and security agencies.

It is time for him to bomb Sambisi forest with nepam and burn it, together with everything that is inside of it, to the ground. It is time for him to rise up and exercise the full powers and authority of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.