Parents of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted a year ago in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok have suggested that the vice principal (academic) of the school where the teenage girls were kidnapped was complicit in their kidnap.
The parents claimed that the role of the vice principal was at least questionable, adding that their daughters were made vulnerable to Boko Haram kidnappers. Some of the parents leveled the allegations while speaking to a correspondent of SaharaReporters.
A mother of one of the abducted girls, Mariam Abubakar, stated that Vice Principal Yerima Banjiri had told the school girls that any one of them who failed to sleep in the school the night of the abduction would be expelled as a student of Government Girls Secondary School Chibok.
According to her, “A week before their abductions, Malam Yerima threatened the students not to leave for their various homes. He said that whoever went home should forget she was ever a student at the school. He told the girls that none of them should go home, that they must sleep in the school. However, none of the teachers’ daughters or even the daughters of the management staff was among those kidnapped. Only the children of we poor people were asked to sleep in the school. The [teachers and administrators] had kept their children in safer places before Boko Haram arrived.”
The distraught mother accused the vice president and possibly other staff of conniving with Boko Haram. “Our concern is that since the day of [the girls’] abduction, we have never set our eyes on Malam Yerima. He is on run,” Ms Abubakar said.
A father of an abducted girl also criticized what he characterized as the Federal Government’s approach of levity in dealing with the abduction. “We have lost confidence in the Nigerian government’s, reaction to our missing children. Nobody asked any questions to the teachers. In fact they are moving free in cities. Why has the government not investigated any of the teachers?” he asked.
One of the parents told SaharaReporters that they had been warned not to speak about their suspicion of the vice principal and other teachers and administrators. But several of the parents and relatives of the abducted girls said they had run out of patience after more than a year since the abductions with little or no hope of their daughters’ rescue.