TheCable

Tunde Bakare, serving overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly church, says the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has failed in terms of protecting Nigerians.

Speaking at the 2nd annual Chibok girls lecture organised by the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement in Abuja, on Saturday, Bakare said the current administration and the previous one did not do enough to prevent Boko Haram abductions.

Bakare added that “our nation is sick” as a result of the “assault faced by the girl child today”.

He said the fact that schoolgirls were abducted in Dapchi, Yobe state, four years after the Chibok incident is “evidence of an anomie and alarming national malady”.

The cleric wondered why both incidents happened the year preceding a general election.

“There is something wrong when a nation is twice beaten. There is something undeniably wrong when the girl child repeatedly becomes the bargaining instrument in negotiation deals between the government and terrorists,” Bakare said.

“Let me ask this question, has this government handled the issue of the Chibok kidnap well?” the audience chorused, “No!”

He asked again, “What of the previous government?” The people responded negatively, and Bakare continued: “Sometime ago, the daughter of President Buhari got married here in Abuja. Just recently, the daughter of Vice-President Osinbajo also got married here.

“The other time a governor gave out his daughter to another governor and they had a very elaborate wedding. Now tell me if their daughters were among the Chibok girls, won’t they have done enough to rescue them?

“Any government that fails to prioritise the security and welfare of its people is a failed government, whether that of Jonathan or Buhari.”

He also chided Buhari over a comment he once made that Aisha, his wife, belongs in the kitchen.

In 2016 while on an official visit to Germany, Buhari had said Aisha “belongs to my kitchen … and the other room.”

The president had said so in reaction to a BBC interview where his wife said his government had been hijacked.

“I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room,” Buhari had said at a press conference where he spoke alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Bakare described Buhari’s statement as “an expensive joke”, saying it was uncalled for.

“It is very sad that he (Buhari) stood beside one of the most powerful women in the world to make that statement,” he said.

“Even if the satement was a joke, that was an expensive joke that was uncalled for on the international scene. It was unnecessary, it was an embarrassment to even the mothers that bore us.

“Their place is not just in the kitchen; they also belong to the parliament. A day will come, that even the (presidential) villa will be occupied by a woman.”

In 2014, Boko Haram fighters kidnapped 276 girls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno state. Of that number, 163 are now free: 57 fled in the early days after their abduction, three more escaped later, and a Swiss-coached mediation secured 103.