How US Vows To Rescue Abducted Schoolgirls
2014-05-04 13:57
AMERICANS and US-based Nigerians are raising serious concerns about the fate of the about 270 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped three weeks ago in Chibok, Borno State. US Secretary of State, Senator John Kerry, pledged yesterday in Addis Ababa that the US government will do everything possible to rescue the children and bring the perpetrators to justice.
As Kerry flew out of Washington over the weekend to Ethiopia where he is participating in the fourth session of the US-Africa Union High Level Dialogue, top American groups, including pastors, business investors and public officials are mounting intense pressure on both the Nigerian community and the Nigerian embassy posts in New York, Washington DC and Atlanta.
For instance, leading African American Pastors like Bishop Jamal Bryant, a top American tele-evangelist and pastor in Maryland State are already organising how to mount pressure on both the US and Nigerian governments to rescue the children.
Sources at the Nigerian embassies across the US, especially in Washington DC and New York, confirm that US members of Congress, business investors and several other notable Americans have been calling in to confirm the exact situation and inquire about what the Nigerian government is going to do. For instance, during the week, a group of bi-partisan US Senators issued a strong resolution condemning the kidnap, calling for an urgent rescue and demanding that justice must be done to the terrorists behind the abduction. Later on Friday, another US Congresswoman, Karen Bass, also released a statement on the issue calling for the release of the Chibok girls.
In deed, several Nigerian groups in the US, including the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN), the Nigeria Democratic Liberty Forum (NDLF) and new groups of Nigerian women in the US, are planning to hold protest rallies in front of the Nigerian embassies in New York and Washington DC this week.
Speaking with The Guardian over the weekend, Pastor Jamal Bryant explained that he was determined to bring the American public to rise up against the abduction of the girls, adding that his heart is broken over the matter. He said he would be using his global TV platforms, starting tomorrow to highlight the plight of the schoolgirls.
Also, Bukola Oreofe, the executive director of the NDLF in New York, disclosed that the group would be calling US-based Nigerians and their friends out to protest in front of the Nigerian House this week. In a similar vein, Ms. Omolola Adele-Oso, spokesperson for BringBackOurGirls in Washington DC, said a rally is planned for Tuesday this week at the Nigerian Embassy at 10am, “because our children deserve better.”
According to Adele-Oso, “we want the world to know of the horrors that could happen to the girls, if they are not returned safely.” According to Kerry, “Let me be clear, the kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime, and we will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice.”
Continuing, the US Secretary of State under whose leadership the US State Department changed its reluctant views on Boko Haram and unlike his predecessors designated Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, said to his African fellow ministers, “I will tell you, my friends, I have seen this scourge of terror across the planet, and so have you. They don’t offer anything except violence. They don’t offer a healthcare plan; they don’t offer schools. They don’t tell you how to build a nation; they don’t talk about how they will provide jobs. They just tell people, “You have to behave the way we tell you to,” and they will punish you if you don’t.”
He said while there are some good things to celebrate in Africa, “we are also meeting at a time of continued crisis. Conflicts in South Sudan, which I visited yesterday, Central African Republic, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the events that we’ve just seen in Nigeria, these are among some of the things that are preventing millions of Africans from realising their full potential. And in some places, they are plunging the continent back into the turmoil of the past.”
Kerry added that, in too many parts of the continent, a lack of security, the threat of violence, or all-out war prevent the shoots of prosperity from emerging. The burdens of past divisions might not disappear entirely, my friends, insisting that such must never be allowed to bury the future of Africa.
He said this was why the US will continue to provide financial and logistical support to African Union-led efforts in Somalia, where Al-Shabaab is under significant pressure, and also continue to support the African Union Regional Task Force against the Lord’s Resistance Army, where LRA-related deaths have dropped by 75 percent, and hundreds of thousands have returned to their homes.
In the same vein, Kerry added “ and that’s why we are working to strengthen Nigeria’s institutions and its military to combat Boko Haram, and their campaign of terror and violence.”
At least, in the past one week, Nigeria has featured prominently in virtually all the major American TV networks and newspapers with a clear and certain focus on the abduction of the Chibok school children.
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