Former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has called for the deployment of British troops to Nigeria to help quell the insurgency in the North East.
Brown, who doubles as the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, while speaking during a debate at the House of Commons called on the British Government to send the troops to retrieve the Chibok girls who have been in captivity since April.
He said, “These wholly innocent young girls—Lugwa Abuga, Rhoda John, Comfort Amos, Maryamu Yakubu and 200 others—are now incarcerated in the forest areas of Borno State. Some have perhaps been dispersed across three other countries: Niger, Cameroon and Chad. Their physical and mental health is a worry for everyone.
“If the girls have been dispersed to a number of different places, a rescue mission for one group would immediately put the other groups at risk. That is the dilemma that confronts the Nigerian Government, as I understand it.
“That is why they need additional support to monitor what is happening and, if it is necessary to intervene, (we should send) the troops, security services and the air cover to do so.”
Jim Shannon, a member of the House expressed doubts over Nigeria’s ability or perceived unwillingness to retrieve the girls.
Shannon said, “The House is filled with members who are equally concerned about this issue. There has been unwillingness, or perhaps the Nigerian government have been unable, to respond in the way that we back home think they should.
“Is that because they are unable to seek the covert assistance that they need in order to ascertain where the schoolchildren are and bring them back? Does he feel that perhaps the covert assistance that this government could offer is one way forward?”
Brown also said, “There is a second thing that we can do to help. We cannot have safe schools if we do not have safe communities. In addition to the rising military and security presence in these towns, we need to allocate extra resources to reassure parents, teachers and children that they can go to school.
“It has to make its schools safer, so that there is confidence among pupils and families that children can go to school. That may mean better perimeter fencing, walls, lighting, and communication and security systems to keep people in touch.”
He said Nigerian government, businessmen and European countries including UK and Norway had funded the Safe Schools initiative to the tune of $22.5 million.
“Money is coming from other countries in the EU, and there are promises from the United States of America. I hope that one outcome of the debate will be to convince the government that it is worth providing more than £1m. Without this initiative, many of the other measures in which we are engaged to help education in Nigeria cannot be successful,” the former prime minister told the House.
“In northern Nigeria today, we have on the one side terrorists, murderers, rapists and cowards hell-bent on acts of depravity, and on the other side we have the defiant, relentless, and brave beyond comprehension young people who are desperately fighting for a future but are too often oblivious to our attention.
“We must be clear that in the battle between the girls of the world and the backward-looking extremists, there will, in the end, be only one winner, but we should not have to wait another half-century with millions of lives ruined, millions of dreams destroyed, millions of hopes and aspirations crushed, for the world to deliver—as we must for the Nigerian girls, and for girls everywhere—the opportunities that should be and are every girl’s birth right,” Brown urged the UK parliament.
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