Buhari’s Visit To Dapchi Won’t Bring Back 110 Abducted Girls – Osinbajo

Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President, has said he and President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Dapchi, Yobe State, won’t bring back the 110 schoolgirls abducted by members of the Boko Haram sect.

Osinbajo said this in the light of criticisms against President Buhari over his failure to visit the families of the schoolgirls that were abducted from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapchi, by members of the dreaded sect.

Nigerians had previously attacked the president for also failing to visit families of victims of Fulani herdsmen attacks across the country.

But speaking in defence of the Buhari regime over the weekend, the Vice President said what is important is not the payment of condolence visits but the steps being taken by the government to protect lives and property.

“There is no amount of condolence that can compensate for the loss of life. Benue killing is one set of killing far too much; there is no amount of condolence that can compensate for that. And I want to say that it’s a massive tragedy,” said Osinbajo.

“But the question that you seem to ask I’ve been to Zamfara, I’ve been to Adamawa when this killing took place. There are those who said, ‘oh, why don’t you visit the Fulani settlement, why do visit only where Christians were?’

“I even visited Benue in September where there have been killing before; then I’ve visited them when the flooding took place and we looked at all the issues and tried to address many of these. There have been several of these issues in different places, recently Dapchi. We have expressed condolences, but no amount of condolence would do.

“The more important thing and our focus have been, is first of all ensuring security in these places.

“We have to address the security question in a much more robust way; that the police are able to do these effectively. We have deployed the military to Kaduna, two battalions to Kaduna. In Benue and Taraba axis, we have the 93 battalions, we have 72 Special Forces.

“We have full concentration in Taraba and all of that, and by the way, the military is fighting in most of the north-east. So, there is a situation where the military is overstretched. So I think the most important thing is, first of all, to ensure they actually address the security of the people,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly in Lagos has criticised President Buhari and 22 governors’ visit to Kano State over the weekend where they attended the wedding Fatiha of Governors Abdullahi Ganduje and Abiola Ajimobi’s children.

Bakare held that President Buhari and the governors wouldn’t have attended the wedding if their daughters were among the 110 girls abducted in Dapchi.