Hours
before Boko Haram insurgents arrived in Dapchi where they seized 110
schoolgirls on February 19, both the Nigerian Army and the police were alerted
to the impending operation but took no serious action to repel it, a new report
by Amnesty International states.
The revelation marked the strongest indication
yet that the Nigerian security agencies, despite their denials, may have had a
fore-knowledge of the attack within an actionable time-frame but failed to act
for reasons that critics say could range from a lack of sufficient capacity to
outright negligence.
This is especially because the security
agencies appear to have learnt little from a similar debacle barely four years
ago when 276 schoolgirls were seized by Boko Haram in Chibok, a community in
the nearby Borno State.
In its report, published Tuesday, Amnesty
International said its investigations revealed that the military failed to
respond when it was alerted to a convoy of Boko Haram that was coasting towards
Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State, in the
afternoon of February 19.
Amnesty International said testimonies gathered
from credible sources indicated that the army and the police received multiple
emergency calls up to four hours before the attackers reached Dapchi, but did
not respond until the girls had already been ushered into waiting Boko Haram
trucks and driven off.
The rights group said
between 2:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on the day of the abduction, security
forces received calls about Boko Haram movements between Borno and Yobe.
“Evidence available to Amnesty International
suggests that there are insufficient troops deployed in the area, and that an
absence of patrols and the failure to respond to warnings and engage with Boko
Haram contributed to this tragedy.
”The Nigerian authorities have failed in their
duty to protect civilians, just as they did in Chibok four years ago. Despite
being repeatedly told that Boko Haram fighters were heading to Dapchi, it
appears that the police and military did nothing to avert the abduction,” said
Osai Ojigho, head of Amnesty International in Nigeria.
No comments:
Post a Comment