Borno State governor, Kassim Shettima, Tuesday disclosed that the abducted female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, were being held in bunkers, inside Sambisa Forest.
The governor, therefore, asked the military, not only to sniff out members of the sect but to also free the over 200 girls who have been held captive for over one year.
Shettima, spoke in Abuja, while presenting a paper at a two-day post election conference on security and governance, organized by the Savanna Centre, a Non Governmental Organisation, NGO, established by former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari.
The governor, who was represented at the occasion by the Secretary, Borno Elders Forum, Dr Bulama Mala Gubio, noted that the extremists, having operated in the forest for several years, may have erected a bunker, large enough to accommodate many people in the area.
He said, “We are suspecting that Chibok girls are living with the insurgents in bunkers, I think the military must carry out their operations beyond the surface earth. They (Boko Haram) were also known to have dug tunnels to enable them move from house to house. So, having been left unchallenged for such a long time, such possibility cannot be ruled out, which poses serious obstacles within the forest, “the governor added.
Speaking further, Shettima said: “The insurgents used their bases in the Sambisa Forest to launch deadly attacks and make quick retreat to their base which enabled them capture and take over control of all the local government areas bordering Nigeria with Cameroon, Chad and Niger, thus effectively cutting off the three neighbouring countries thereby declaring what they assumed was their independent territory (caliphate).”
He added that unless Sambisa Forest was completely combed by the Nigerian troop, any reconstruction and rehabilitation carried out in the North East region would still be destroyed.
“Unless and only if the Sambisa Forest is effectively recovered from the terrorists shall we think of defeating the Boko Haram and begin to embark on a holistic approach for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the North East. In fact, at several stages the Borno State Government had intervened to reconstruct destroyed schools, health centres, homes, markets and so on, only for the insurgents to attack and destroy them again”, he noted.
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