Lagos – Industrial Global Union, a front line global labour body on Friday, appealed to the Federal Government and the United Nations to intensify measures to secure freedom for abducted Chibok girls.
The union made the appeal at a news briefing to mark two years of the abduction of more than 200 girls from Government Secondary School, Chibok in Borno.
Mr Issa Aremu, spokesperson Industrial Global Union in Sub-Saharan Africa, said that organised labour considered the continued captivity of the girls as an injury to the movement.
“It is exactly two years that the Boko Haram terrorists brutally abducted the 219 school girls. Fifty-seven of them luckily escaped, but some are still missing till date.
“Since then hundreds have been further abducted. Whoever kidnaps a girl-child kidnaps a future.
“keeping 219 girls in captivity for 639 days is an assault on the future of humanity,’’ Aremu said.
He said that not less than 17 of parents of the girls had reportedly lost their lives as a result of the trauma and that many were living in daily agony.
Aremu said that the global labour organisation commended efforts of President Muhammad Buhari’s administration at smashing the dens of the Boko Haram terrorists.
According to him, as at today, no known territory of Nigeria is under the heel of the criminal gang.
He advised that war against terror in Nigeria and anywhere, should not be the war to reclaim territories but to regain and restore lives, rescue the Chibok girls to return to their homes and schools.
Aremu said the labour movement considered the missing girls as future workers, mothers “and not just statistics’’.
He lamented that global terrorism was increasingly making the world of work more precarious as thousands of workers in Nigeria, France, Belgium, Syria, and Iraq had been brutally abducted and killed by terrorists.
He said that the insurgents see defenceless workers as `soft targets.’
He advised the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to double its efforts with all the international agencies to rid the world of terror.
“Social dialogue and negotiated settlements are tested ILO’s mechanisms for resolving social conflicts, not senseless violence in which innocent Chibok girls are victims.
“Nothing justifies criminal abductions. Chibok girls are missing, but they are not forgotten until they are rescued,’’ Aremu said. (NAN)
