Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, has said that the Armed Forces know where the abducted girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borne State, are being detained, pointing out that the girls who were kidnapped on April 14 were located even before foreign military assistance came to Nigeria.
He, however, said that using force to rescue the girls from the clutches of the Boko Haram insurgents will be dangerous and counter-productive, noting that the military would follow events at the camps cautiously and may not immediately use force to release the girls so that the insurgents will not have any excuse to kill their victims.
Badeh, who spoke on Monday at a solidarity rally outside the Defence Headquarters in Abuja organised by a civil society group known as the Citizens Initiative for Security Awareness, said the military can bring back the abducted girls but that the best option of securing their freedom had to be explored to save the lives of the students.
Last Wednesday, the Air Chief Marshal also made similar remarks about knowing where the girls were being held when the Board and Management of National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), paid him a visit at the Defence Headquarters in Abuja.
At the Monday’s rally, Badeh declared that the military wants the girls back saying: “we can do it, our military can do it but we cannot go with force because of where they are held. They may be killed if we go in with force. So, nobody should come and say the Nigerian military does not know what it is doing. We know what we are doing and we can’t go and kill the girls in the name of bringing them back.”
He added that the good development was the knowledge that the girls are still alive and “we know where they are but we cannot tell you. We cannot come and tell you military secrets. Just leave us alone, we are working and we would get the girls back”.
Badeh also stressed that every military operation involves good planning, mapping out strategies and the study of the weakness of the enemy.
He thus appealed to Nigerians to be patient and give the army time to secure the girls.
Leader of the group, Mr. Chidi Omeze, who is the National Coordinator, said the group was at the Defence Headquarters to show solidarity to the military and to encourage the army to do more to bring back the girls who were kidnapped from their school April 14, this year.
There have been series of demonstrations in Abuja and other parts of the country in support of parents of the abducted GGSS, Chibok with the protesters making appeals to the government to do more to free the girls.