No New Development On Chibok Girls – CDS

Abducted-Chibok-school-grilsThe Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin, yesterday said the military has no new report on the abducted Chibok girls.

He, however, maintained that the Nigerian military was sustaining the battle to effectively end the Boko Haram insurgency.

Olonisakin made this known while speaking at the 2015‎ Nigerian Navy Research and development seminar, with the theme; ‘Innovation and Research and Development (R&D): Turning Bright Ideas to Operational Solutions’ in Abuja.

The Defence chief emphasised the Nigerian military’s commitment to end the Boko Haram insurgency, adding that scrutiny and interrogation of females rescued from the insurgents’ enclaves in various areas have not yielded much.

“So far, we don’t have any report concerning them (Chibok girls), but of course, we have some Boko Haram terrorists, who have surrendered. Among them are women and children.

“We have collection point for their wives and children and we are moving them to areas where we can profile and identify them and ensure that they are not really involved in Boko Haram activities”, he said.

Olonisakin, who was special guest of honour at the Nigerian Navy Research and Development Seminar 2015, stressed the need for citizens’ vigilance and security agencies’ synergy towards surmounting the challenges of insecurity.

Earlier, the Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas said that the Nigerian Navy Directorate of research and development was established in 2004 with the aim of addressing the immediate problems associated with service’s operational, logistics and technology acquisition, but lamented that it performance had been less inspiring.

Ibas pointed out that “the recurring issue of sustainability of the fleet stood imposingly and staunchly to dispel many doubt on this, and the reasons for this poor outing were not far-fetched as its include; poor resource availability, inadequate coordination of R&D activities in the NN”.

To address the challenges, the Naval chief noted that the seminar was one of the approaches the navy adopted to purse her inventive intentions and to reposition R&D as the pivot of attaining a technological self-reliance.

“The past effort of these initiatives have already triggered appropriate R&D activities in some development objectives contained within the extant Revised NN Transformation plan 2011-2020.

“The directorate have made a remarkable innovative progress in design, construction, information, technology and training; including the use of alginate extracted from sea weeds to stabilise late rite to produce Compressed Earth Blocks”, he said.

To this end, Ibas challenged the participants that the value of their deliberations during the seminar is expected to form the key determinant for successful transformation of the naval operations.

The seminar was attended by service chiefs, heads of parastatals and security agencies as well as some private sector groups.