Civil rights activist and co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement, Aisha Yesufu, has again, called out former president Goodluck Jonathan over his inactions and incompetence during the abduction of Chibok girls in 2014.
She also denied allegations that the movement was being funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as claimed by a Nigerian journalist, David Hundeyin, who accused the group of receiving money from USAID to “bring down former Goodluck Jonathan’s administration”.
Speaking during an interview on Arise TV, Yesufu who berated Jonathan for his silence 19 days after the abduction, also criticised Nigerians who have shown a lack of empathy for the abducted girls and those who have sought to politicise the movement.
“What is happening is that we have lots of Nigerians who are bereft of empathy, humanity and who watched girls that went to school being taken away and they did nothing. And for 11 years, they have looked for ways to concoct allegations and say ‘BBOG were either funded or whatever’ and that is the reason why they didn’t do it”.
“The thing is that we all are victims waiting to happen. And the fact that Nigerians refused to come together and put politics aside and focus on the lives of girls that were taken away. Rather, they were focused on an incompetent president as of that time, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan”.
“They turned him into a feeding-bottle baby that cannot talk. Was it Yesufu that told Goodluck Ebele Jonathan that for 19 days , he shouldn’t talk about Chibok Girls that were abducted under him?”
“And I think another thing that a lot of people have forgotten is the fact that before the abduction of Chibok girls, Buni Yadi boys have been slaughtered in their school. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, and I am calling him out, he never said a word. How heartless, how callous can you be?”
“When we were making demands for the Chibok girls, which we are still doing for the rest that are still not back home, we were not doing them a favour. It is not a privilege. It is their right as enshrined in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Nigeria failed them by allowing them to be abducted and the next thing was to bring them back immediately, which they didn’t do,” she said.
