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The United Global Resolve For Peace (UGRFP) has called on the Federal Government to verify the authenticity of a viral video alleging Leah Sharibu’s death.
In the film, the six aid workers, abducted by Boko Haram last week, were seen frantically pleading with the government to negotiate their release.
In a statement yesterday in Abuja, the Executive Director of UGRFP, Shalom Olaseni, cautioned the government against taking at a face value all the information passed on in the video of Miss Grace Taku, adding that it may as well be propaganda.
Olaseni, however, blamed the “abysmal effort of government” to secure the release of the teenager all this while, stressing that “so many other innocent school girls and boys, women and men who have been victims of the terror of Boko Haram, are statistical graveyards of the ineptitude of leadership, and of a failed security and social system.”
According to him, it is not out of context for the objective of the group to assert itself through the “actual death of Miss Leah Sharibu, especially as a strategy to purge public outrage against the government to bring them to the table of negotiation.”
He went on: “With the recent kidnap of a new Christian aid worker and others, Boko Haram have the fodder to, perhaps, bargain for the release of their men or other monetary gains to swell their ranks.
“We must wait for further proof of the claims in the said video, especially as it is well within the capacity of the Nigerian government through its intelligence community to verify such a sordid claim.
“All efforts to verify the sad claims made by Miss Taku must be intensified with the thought and intent to secure the release of Miss Leah Sharibu and others like her if indeed the news of her death is false.”
Besides, former Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Professor Epiphany Azinge, urged the central government to recognise Sharibu’s ‘uncommon courage’ by ensuring her freedom.
In an, he appealed to government to first of all, ascertain the young Sharibu’s whereabouts and health condition through intelligence, and then go ahead to secure her release.
For Azinge, since there was no concrete evidence of her death, it would be heartwarming for government to investigate and confirm to Nigerians that she is, indeed, alive and kicking.
