The Nigeria Airforce has delt a blow to the purported exchange of Chibok girls with Boko Haram members held by the government. With the new proof of life video about the Kidnapped Chibok girls by Boko Haram terror group, air marshal Sadique Abubakar, the Chief of Air Staff, has revealed that the Air Force has no intelligence on whether the Chibok girls are in Sambisa Forest or not.
“Honestly we don’t. That is the truth of the matter. Even if you see women that are dressed in hijab, how are you sure they are women; that they are not men? It is only when you get there and they remove the hijab that you now realise that they are men and they have their rifles. “There is no credible intelligence that will specifically tell you that these girls are here,” he told journalists. He added that the air force planes fly daily with the hope of sighting the Chibok girls adding that about 50 per cent of the NAF flying missions in counter-insurgency operations were devoted to Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance.
“There is no day that the sun rises and sets that we do not go out hoping to see these girls. From January this year to August 17, we flew 2,600 hours. About 50 per cent of that was Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance. “We are hoping that through the intelligence, we will be able to capture the movement of those girls; we will be able to locate what we consider legitimate targets.” He dismissed the latest Boko Haram video, where the sect displayed some girls, which it claimed were killed by military bombardment, as cheap propaganda. He said there was no way bodies of people killed by bombardment could be intact as shown in the video.
“Even the IED (improvised explosive device) that they (the sect) developed, have you ever seen a complete body together after an attack on any location?” “These guys are just trying to whip up sentiment because they know that every Nigerian is concerned about the girls.” Meanwhile, Ten people have been killed and 13 others abducted by Boko Haram insurgents in a raid on a village near Chibok, Borno state. Locals told AFP that the sect members invaded Kubrrivu at dawn on Saturday, August 20, firing sporadically.
