Police block #BringBackOurGirls campaigners from accessing Buhari

Lagos. (NMG) The #BringBackOurGirls, the Nigerian organisation campaigning for the rescue of the remaining 219 Chibok schoolgirls in Boko Haram’s custody has been prevented from entering presidential Villa.

The group, made up mainly women marched to the State House Abuja on Monday to demand quick action towards the release of the missing Chibok schoolgirls.

The march led by former minister of Education, Prof Oby Ezekwesili, met stiff resistance from anti-riot policemen as they marched to the villa to present their case.

Prof Ezekwesili criticised the police action, which she described as anti-democracy.

The activist who launched the campaign in April 2014 when the girls were abducted in their school said that no sacrifice was too big to be made for the release of the girls.

She insisted on the release of some of the jailed Islamists in exchange for the schoolgirls as demanded by the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, in a recent video.

The campaign involved some of the parents of the abducted girls.

The military recently described the request for exchange of prisoner for the schoolgirls as a political decision that only President Muhammadu Buhari can make.

The Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, on Sunday said that the government was studying the video released by Shekau in which some of the girls were killed by Air Force bombing of the stronghold of the insurgents.

He described the video as ``technically deficient’’, but expressed the determination of the Force to recover the girls.