Chibok Girls Still Alive- Jonathan

As we get closer to the anniversary of the kidnapping of the Chibok Girls, President Jonathan assured  the parents of the girls yesterday that they were still alive and his government was doing everything possible to bring them back. He was optimistic because if they girls have been killed, their killers would have showed off their corpses. The President admitted that their government underestimated Boko Haram and that is why they are so entrenched.








Speaking on why the girls have not been recovered despite the gains recorded by the military, the president said this was because “reasonable territories are still in the hands of Boko Haram”.

His words: “

       We promised that we must get the girls. The good story is that they have not killed them because the terrorists, when they kill, they display. They use it to intimidate the whole society. The girls are alive. We will get the girls. Luckily, we are narrowing down the area of their control. So, we will get them. At the beginning, probably we did not really estimate the capacity of Boko Haram. It is obvious Boko Haram started as a non-violent group led by Yusuf, limited to around Maiduguri area and Yobe. They did not even get to Adamawa.

“Just like every group of youths or young people that is inclined to criminalit, they expanded their network and linked up with other terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda in North Africa and other similar brands in the world.

“So, they continued to build their capacity and it got to a point that for you to tackle them in the kind of environment they operate, you need some specialized equipment to use and we don’t manufacture these equipment now. That is why the movement has changed. So, it is not deliberate,” he said.