PANIC AS NO GROUP CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR DAPCHI GIRLS

Parents and friends of the abducted Dapchi school girls have resorted to prayers and fasting for their release, sources in Dapchi, Geidam, Gashua and Damaturu towns told our correspondent yesterday.

“We are in prayers, in fact many of us fasted today (Saturday) and the Yobe State government also directed that prayers should be offered after the five daily prayers in all mosques in the state”, Mohammed Aliyu, an uncle to one of the girls named Fatima, said.

This comes as anxiety heightens over the whereabouts of the over 100 girls who disappeared on Monday, February 19, after a siege by suspected Boko Haram fighters at the Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC) Dapchi in Yobe State.

Any of the two factions of the Boko Haram could have perpetrated the act as they did in the past, but sources familiar with the security situation in the North-East said they suspect the Abu Mus’ab Albarnawi faction which has strong ties with the Islamic State of West Africa.

A source fingered the Albarnawi faction for the atrocity in the school in Dapchi, the headquarters of Bursari Local Government Area. But another source said even the Shekau faction could have carried out the act, “because he too carries out expeditions around those areas from town to town”.

On the day of the abduction, the girls were reportedly helped by their teachers to scale the perimeter fence of the school and dispersed in different directions.

The girls school had a population of 926 students and after a headcount spanning four days, 105 could not be accounted for.

A security source said: “it took the terrorists two days to reach their new camp in Abadam with the girls.

“Actually, army patrol vehicle met an abandoned truck along Geidam in Yobe State and Kareto in Borno State,” he said.

“The motivation behind the abduction is more funds and security…seeing their vast fortresses (Sambisa and Lake Chad) are falling, the Boko Haram would use the girls as a human shield,” he said.

Another source, a local in Yunusari Local Government Area, said the vehicle was found a day after the incident, adding that it was left behind by the abductors when it became unserviceable.

Another security source said the vegetation around Abadam is not as thick as what obtains in former enclaves of the Boko Haram, “hence the desperation of the insurgents to move from one place to another.

“Indeed they are extremely mobile because they don’t have the luxury of staying in one place,” he said.

Albarnawi, who has the support of Mamman Nur had before the recent offensive by Nigerian security forces controlled large swath along the Lake Chad Region, the area which the girls were reportedly taken to.

He was responsible for the abduction of staff of the Geology Department of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) in July last year, who were released two weeks ago.

They were kidnapped while searching for oil in collaboration with the NNPC in July last year. Their exploration team was ambushed by Boko Haram in an attack in which at least 69 people died.

Sources told Daily Trust on Sunday that various stakeholders including the military, federal and Yobe State governments are still comparing notes.

“Yes, it has been established that the girls are not missing but abducted and everything is being done to rescue them,” a source said.