''The use of Chibok girls by Boko Haram is actually not true'', Mike Omeri, Co-ordinator of National Information Center

Nigerian Government Wednesday [July 30] took steps to douse anxiety over the possibility that Boko Haram insurgents are using the abducted Chibok schoolgirls as female suicide bombers. Female bombers have carried out series of attacks on Kano city in the last five days, fueling fears that those involved could be some of the girls being held by the terrorists.

Members of the #BringBackOurGirls group, including one of its coordinators, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, raised the alarm that the continued incarceration of the abducted girls in Boko Haram’s custody could spell doom.

The former education minister stated that the Federal Government must not “move on,” as the Chibok girls may well be indoctrinated or coerced into being used as suicide bombers.

“It feels like eternity since April 14 when our girls lost their freedom. How can we move on like that? This new trend and serial pattern of female suicide bombers surely should particularly worry us.

“Female suicide bombers are again and again becoming the trend and our Chibok girls are still in the enemy’s den. It worries me stiff. Are we thinking? Our Chibok girlsreally need to be rescued from the clutches of evil.

“We must all not stop praying and demanding that the FG acts for results. We have no apology for being agitated. We have nothing to defend for crying out for their rescue,” she wrote on her Twitter page.

However, The Co-ordinator of National Information Center, Mike Omeri, during a routine security breifing alongside respresentatives of the security service forces in Abuja, vehemrntly denied the insinuation.

''The use of Chibok girls by Boko Haram is actually not true'', Omeri sharply responded to a question asked by a journalist at the briefing.

Another key member of the coalition, Bukky Shonibare, stated that the number of days the abducted girls had spent in Boko Haram’s custody was enough for them to have been indoctrinated.

According to Shonibare, it is now increasingly dangerous for the Federal Government that boasted of knowing the location of the girls to leave them with their captors.

“Seems abducted women that were undergoing indoctrination and brainwashing while in hostage for years are now being sent out as suicide bombers. However, 100 days is long enough for anyone’s ideologies or principles to be distorted, especially teenagers whose values are still being shaped.

“To know the possible impact of 100+ days on one’s ideologies, psychologists say it takes only 30 days! It is now increasingly dangerous to leave those girls there. Whatever is it they are doing may be counterproductive.

“They (Chibok girls) can be indoctrinated, brainwashed, or put under duress to do this. In the face of death, no sensible human will be a ‘willing participant.’ There’ll definitely be an element of coercion,” Shonibare tweeted.

Political blogger, Japheth Omojuwa, said the resort by the Boko Haram to the use of teenage female suicide bombers might be a technical way by the insurgents to save their men for combat.

He lamented that it was unthinkable that the terrorist group would make use of innocent girls as couriers of death.

Echoing the sentiments of the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners, he added....

“You don’t need 105 days to indoctrinate an innocent girl. Some of those Chibok girls may never be ‘innocent’ again. Chibok girls or not, these insurgents are destroying young girls. Again, the girl child suffers for what she knows not about.”