Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said on Wednesday that the federal government cannot put a timeline to the rescue of the 217 girls abducted from Government Secondary School Chibok in Borno state about two years ago despite security reports that the girls could be rescued. Osinbajo said this in Abuja at the one-day Roundtable on Vulnerable People in Nigeria in honour of the Chibok girls organised by the Office of the National Security Adviser.
The Vice President said said people should not assume that government was not doing enough to bring back the girls to their families.
According to him, the complex nature of the abduction issue makes it imperative for government to be cautious in handling the matter so that the best result could be achieved.
He said recovery of the Chibok girls is of utmost importance to the extent that it dominates the security meetings and that President Buhari as a parent shares in their trauma.
“At every security council meeting that I have attended, the president has always been concerned about Chibok girls.
He thinks of how this can be done quickly.
“But it’s a very delicate issue and we cannot say we can deal with it next week. Every rescue attempt must take the safety of the girls into consideration.
“From the security reported we get, we will be able to bring back the girls but we must exercise some caution and patience and not sound as if it can be done but it’s not being done,” he said.
The Vice President called for continued collaboration and assistance from non-government and civil society organisations in further addressing issues around the wellbeing of victims and the task of rebuilding the North East areas affected by insurgency.
Osinbajo also spoke on welfare packages for the poor, saying that in dealing with the poorest of the poor in the country, government must pay attention to how its programmes were designed.
“The soft under belly of our system is that we expose the most vulnerable to the harshest conditions. That’s why the government has come up with intervention programmes including conditional cash transfer,” he said.
He said understanding that fundamental problems of poverty, corruption and lack of education are interconnected is critical to fashioning out long term solutions to the plight of vulnerable people in the country.
He said vulnerable people are exposed to the harshest conditions not only in conflict areas but in everyday life, stressing that budgets should be tailored to provide for the poor people.
Present at the forum were Ministers of Interior and Environment, representatives of National Security Adviser and Service Chiefs, Ambassadors of US, France and the UK High Commissioners to Nigeria, representatives of European Commission, relevant government agencies as well as NGOs and CSOs including the Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG group.
