- Let the girls be the sacrificial lambs, they said
- Culturally in our area, when our child or a person is missing for three to four months and you do not hear anything about the person, we will arrange for the burial ceremony
After hoping and waiting for more for the safe return of their daughters, parents of the kidnapped Chibok school girls said they have given up on the matter and are now ready to use their daughters as sacrificial lambs, if it will end insurgency and the terror.
Since the girls have been missing for more than four months, the parents said they presumed the students to have died for which their funeral rites have already been performed in their (parents’) minds according to their custom.
They, however, urged the federal government bring the girls’ corpses for honourable burial.
Chairman of the Chibok community in Abuja, Hosea Tsambido, stated that he had been in contact with the parents who had given up hope of their daughters returning alive and are only asking that the government return with their bodies so that they can be given proper burial.
He stated this in Abuja during the protest by members of the BringBackOurGirls the movement to mark 130 days after over 200 girls were abducted from the Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok.
Tsambido stated that the Chibok culture requires parents and family members of missing persons to bury their loved ones, if they have been missing for over four months, adding that after three to four months the families must perform the burial ritual and assume that the persons are dead to enable them move on with their lives.
His words: “Culturally in our area, when our child or a person is missing for three to four months and you do not hear anything about the person, we will arrange for the burial ceremony and to take it as if the person is dead and we will perform the burial ritual and forget about the person and try to forge ahead with life.
“Now the parents are saying that it is better for them to bring the girls back, even if it means the corpses so that they will bury them properly.
“Let the girls be the sacrificial lambs, that is what they told me. I` spoke with them last night on the issue and their opinion is that the army should go into Sambisa. If some of the girls are saved, die or abscond, so be it than all this trauma that the parents are going through right now.
“They are saying that let the government go into the forest and bring back the corpses of the children so that they can bury them properly.
TNO
