Eight years after the abduction of Leah Sharibu from her school in Dapchi, former presidential aide, Laolu Akande, has called on the Federal Government to urgently renew efforts to secure her freedom, describing her prolonged captivity as a national tragedy and a stain on the country's conscience.
Speaking on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande on Channels Television on Sunday, Akande lamented that public attention around Leah's ordeal has waned, even as her years in captivity continue to mount.
"The headlines have disappeared and the placards significantly dwindled but it is now 8 years since a young Nigerian girl - Leah Sharibu was abducted from her school in Dapchi by terrorists on that fateful day," he said.
Leah was among the schoolgirls abducted in 2018 when terrorists stormed Government Girls' Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State.
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While negotiations eventually led to the release of 104 of the 105 surviving girls, Leah was held back.
"Negotiations ensued and of the 105 girls that survived, the terrorists held Leah back. They only held Leah back because she refused to renounce her faith," Akande recalled.
Now 22, Leah has become, in Akande's words, "a symbol of individual resilience and unwavering faith in her Christian grounding." Yet behind that symbolism lies a painful reality.
"Since then, Leah who is now 22, has become a symbol of individual resilience and unwavering faith in her Christian grounding. She must have endured a life of oppression, abuse, and excruciating mental misery and torment. She went into captivity as a teenager who we are told has now been married off twice with children. Her youth is being stolen day after day, month after month, and year after year. What a tribulation she must have experienced," he said.
Akande drew parallels between Leah's case and that of the schoolgirls abducted in 2014 from Chibok, noting that many of them remain unaccounted for more than a decade later.
"Her story, just like the very many Chibok girls still lost out there in the thick of prolonged abyss of terrorist brutality reminds us our profound failure as a community, as a people and as a government," he stated.
Marking the eighth anniversary of Leah's captivity, Akande urged the administration of President Bola Tinubu to make her rescue an urgent national priority.
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"Let us use this 8th anniversary of Leah Sharibu's captivity to remind ourselves and our federal government led by President Bola Tinubu that we should renew efforts and engage to free Leah Sharibu and all those documented cases of abductions in our country. We must deploy every intelligence assets - everything we've got; we must tap into international assistance wherever it is available to locate and rescue Leah urgently," Akande said..
