Nigeria’s mission to find kidnapped girls ‘pathetic’
Emmanuel Ogebe on whether Boko Haram can be stopped in West Africa
A leading human rights official says victims’ families feel “shortchanged” by the Nigerian government in their inability to find the nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram.
Fox News National Security Analyst KT McFarland spoke to Emmanuel Ogebe about the search. Ogebe is an international human rights lawyer and expert in bilateral U.S.-Nigerian relations.
Ogebe recently returned from a three week fact-finding mission to Nigeria and refugee camps along the border with Cameroon, where he interviewed many Boko Haram victims.
Ogebe says extremists launched an attack on civilians during his visit.
“In Cameroon last week Boko Haram attacked another community, killed hundreds of people,” Ogebe said. “It is a precarious humanitarian situation … on the Cameroon side.”
Critics have called the Nigerian officials’ response to Boko Haram “pathetic.”
Ogebe said he spoke to victims’ families, who said they were deeply frustrated. “They told me how they pursued the terrorists into the forests [themselves] … but they were discouraged from going on and asked to wait for military backup and reinforcements that never showed up.”
He believes Boko Haram did not kidnap the girls for ransom, but rather for them to become “slave brides.” Ogebe doubts they will negotiate a ransom for the girls. “Boko Haram is not in it for the money but for the jihad,” Ogebe said. “Their leader sees this as a spiritual injunction.”
Watch the full interview with Emmanuel Ogebe above.
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