‘Chibok parents ready to sacrifice their girls to end terrorism’

Chibok girls

Parents of the abducted Chibok girls have told President Jonathan and the Nigerian Army to go ahead and end Boko Haram, even if it endangers the lives of the girls.

They said they are ready to turn their daughters into sacrificial lambs, if it will end insurgency and the terror that Boko Haram has being carrying out.

Four months after the captivity of their daughters, the parents are now ready for the military to invade the Sambisa forest no matter the outcome.

Chairman of the Chibok community in Abuja, Hosea Tsambido, stated that he had been in contact with the parents who had given up hope of their daughters returning alive and are only asking that the government return with their bodies so that they can be given proper burial.

He stated this in Abuja  during the protest by members of the BringBackOurGirls the movement to mark 130 days after over 200 girls were abducted from the Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok.

Tsambido stated that the Chibok culture requires parents and family members of missing persons to bury their loved ones, if they have been missing for over four months, adding that after three to four months the  families must perform the burial ritual and assume that the persons are dead to enable them move on with their lives.

His words: “Culturally in our area, when our child or a person is missing for three to four months and you do not hear anything about the person, we will arrange for the burial ceremony and to take it as if the person is dead and we will perform the burial ritual and forget about the person and try to forge ahead with life.

“Now the parents are saying that it is better for them to bring the girls back, even if it means the corpses so that they will bury them properly.

“Let the girls be the sacrificial lambs, that is what they told me. I` spoke with them last night on the issue and their opinion is that the  army should go into Sambisa. If some of the girls are saved, die or abscond, so be it than all this trauma that the parents are going through right now.

“They are saying that let the government go into the forest and bring back the corpses of the children so that they can bury them properly.

Leader of the movement, Oby Ezekwesili, has asked the government to tell the group and Nigerians what is being done to rescue the girls after 130 days.

Her words: “This is 130 days after they were abducted and we are no where closer as to knowing the fate of those girls and having any information on their rescue.

“The challenge that we have is the fact that we are told that a rescue operation is going on but when you connect the dots in the statements that are made, it leaves you within the logical frame without any precise sense of a rescue operation because in the case of abduction, what we know around the world is that people try to rescue through a military operation or they try to rescue through negotiation and and they try to sometimes have a mix of those two options.

“Each time that we have listened to statements from government, including from the President, it has seemed to dismiss any of these options and so that leaves us asking, what exactly is going on 130 days since these girls were abducted.