Nigerians Must Protest Female Students’ Abduction – Aregbesola

Staff April 23, 2014

Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola, has urged Nigerians to take to the streets to protest last week’s abduction of 234 girls from their hostel at Government Girl’s Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.
Aregbesola spoke on Tuesday at the presentation of a book “Giant of History (The making of our world)” authored by the Lagos State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Lateef Ibirogba, at Civic Centre Lagos.
The governor, who was the Keynote Speaker at the event lamented that seven days after the abduction, it was frightening that there has been no lead as to where the girls have been kept.
“Am so depressed about what is happening in the country and I do not know how to put it. I cannot understand the rationale behind the kidnapping of school girls. Girls who left their homes with sole ambition of acquiring knowledge only to end up as companions to criminals it is frightening,” he said.
The governor lamented that Nigerians were gradually accepting kidnapping as a normal occurrence, saying that the time has come for all to rise up and kick against the situation.
“I don’t even know what say than to urge everybody to do anything humanly possible collectively and individually to put an end to this sad development. The Federal Government must rise up to this. Everyone in authority must act now. It is not only degrading us as a people, it is defaming us.
“As horrible as Afghanistan is we never read of human beings abducted .We talk of no man’s land of West Afghanistan, such does not happen. Nigeria is heading to the level that does not recognize us as civilized people and human beings anymore and it is a shame.
“I should not have said this here considering my position in the polity but what is my choice? When school children are being abducted in schools and we carry on as if it is mere statistics. It is not. We must protest on the streets to tell all of us that enough is enough.”
THE NATION