The Northern Governors' Forum on Wednesday welcomed the U.S.
government's offer of military assistance to Nigeria to help locate and rescue
the over 200 schoolgirls abducted in Chibok, Borno.
The Chairman of the forum and Governor of Niger state, Dr
Babangida Aliyu, expressed the forum's position at a meeting on Wednesday night
in Abuja between some select Northern governors and the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajah Shah.
The visiting top U.S. envoy hosted the governors at the
residence of the Mission Director of USAID in Nigeria, Michael Harvey, in Maitama,
Abuja.
Aliyu told the U.S. official that the April 14 abduction
happened in a part of the country ``where up till today we still beg parents to
bring their children to school".
"For the abduction to happen in a school environment means
that if we do not do anything, we will be taken fifty years back, because many
parents would be discouraged to send their children to school.
“So we welcome the participation and assistance of the
American government to ensure that we are able to get this children back alive
and for us to have more secure environment.’’
The forum's chairman thanked USAID for concentrating many of
its programmes in the north, especially in the health sector and girl-child
education.
He said the meeting was a follow-up to the meeting held in
March in Washington D.C. between U.S. officials and the governors, which
centered on security issues and development of the region.
“People should understand that when we talk about security,
it is not normally about the bullet and the guns; security is about the welfare
of people," Aliyu said.
Earlier, Shah expressed deep sympathy for the families of
the kidnapped girls and reiterated President Barrack Obama’s commitment to help
find the missing girls.
Boko Haram, through its leader Abubakar Shekau, had claimed
responsibility for taking the girls.
According to the Nigeria police, 53 of the girls have
managed to escape from the captors while 223 of them are still missing.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr James
Entwistle, had later told reporters that he held discussions earlier on
Wednesday afternoon with some Nigeria security officials on what the ``U.S.
team might look like".
“Obviously I cannot share out those details but we are in
the process of putting together a team that we think will respond to what your
security officials had told me you need,’’ he said.
The ambassador said the team would be in Nigeria shortly and
did not provide further details on the composition of the inter-agency team offered
by the U.S. government.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Governors
Umaru Tanko Al-mukara (Nasarawa), Idris
Wada (Kogi), Mukhtar Yero (Kaduna) , Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) and Acting
governor of Taraba Garba Umar attended the meeting.
Others are the Deputy Governors of Jigawa, Kano and Benue,
Ahmed Gumel, Dr Umar Ganduje and Stephen Lawani, respectively as well as the
Secretary to the Zamfara State Government, Tijani Kaura.
Prof Ade Adefuye, Nigerian Ambassador to the U.S., also
attended the meeting which went into closed-door by 9.00 p.m.
NAN
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