L
LequteMan
Guest
Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Tuesday in an interview by Katie Couric of #YahooNews, said the Federal Government can’t promise finding over 234 schoolgirls abducted from Government Girls Secondary School, #Chibok, #Borno State.
“No one can answer that question. There is no one who can tell you with confidence. What we can tell you is that every single possible resource will be used to track these girls. You are dealing with people who are irrational” Okonjo-Iweala said.
Reacting to the waves of criticism that trailed the Federal government slow response to the incident, she said: “the government did not communicate what it was doing previously, because there was some element of reticence so as not to cause harm to the girls. That should not have been the case, it should have been that there was communication so that the Nigerian public and the parents of these girls know that action is being taken”.
“President Goodluck Jonathan has openly pledged his commitment to do everything to rescue these girls, and the government has stepped up action. It has appealed to the international community for help and is accepting help from the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China and they are all coming in. “The government has stepped up the number of troops that are working there and is working with countries that have satellite imagery to do more” she said.
#Okonjo-Iweala, rubbished claims that the abducted girls families seem to know where the girls are, and the government doesn’t.
“They searched in the Sambisa forest, they were not using aerial surveillance, they were not able to find the girls. This is a large area and it is not clear whether they (abducted girls) are still together in a group or whether they have been split up, and the whole idea is that nothing should be done to harm the girls. In the past, the country has used some aerial surveillance but you can’t do that because you don’t want to end up harming the girls”.
When she was asked how the government intends to halt insurgents, who claimed ‘western education is a sin’, and therefore wants to stop women from acquiring education and getting jobs, she said: “we are going to stop the extremists with a multi-prong approach. It is not a simple thing; there is the military angle, the insurgency angle, the political angle that has to be pursued and also there is the development angle where we have to give our young people hope and make sure that their school is not interfered with, that they feel more secure”.
“No one can answer that question. There is no one who can tell you with confidence. What we can tell you is that every single possible resource will be used to track these girls. You are dealing with people who are irrational” Okonjo-Iweala said.
Reacting to the waves of criticism that trailed the Federal government slow response to the incident, she said: “the government did not communicate what it was doing previously, because there was some element of reticence so as not to cause harm to the girls. That should not have been the case, it should have been that there was communication so that the Nigerian public and the parents of these girls know that action is being taken”.
“President Goodluck Jonathan has openly pledged his commitment to do everything to rescue these girls, and the government has stepped up action. It has appealed to the international community for help and is accepting help from the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China and they are all coming in. “The government has stepped up the number of troops that are working there and is working with countries that have satellite imagery to do more” she said.
#Okonjo-Iweala, rubbished claims that the abducted girls families seem to know where the girls are, and the government doesn’t.
“They searched in the Sambisa forest, they were not using aerial surveillance, they were not able to find the girls. This is a large area and it is not clear whether they (abducted girls) are still together in a group or whether they have been split up, and the whole idea is that nothing should be done to harm the girls. In the past, the country has used some aerial surveillance but you can’t do that because you don’t want to end up harming the girls”.
When she was asked how the government intends to halt insurgents, who claimed ‘western education is a sin’, and therefore wants to stop women from acquiring education and getting jobs, she said: “we are going to stop the extremists with a multi-prong approach. It is not a simple thing; there is the military angle, the insurgency angle, the political angle that has to be pursued and also there is the development angle where we have to give our young people hope and make sure that their school is not interfered with, that they feel more secure”.
