By AbdulRaheem Aodu
Kaduna
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday told the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, to look for goods to sell if he had chosen to be a trader instead of selling the over 200 schoolgirls abducted at a government school in Chibok, Borno state because they are not his products.
Addressing a rally held at Murtala Square Kaduna to protest the continual captivity of the over 200 schoolgirls abducted over a month ago, NLC Vice Chairman, Comrade Issa Aremu, who was reacting to recent threats by Shekau to sell the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls at open market, said “real men don’t sell girls but goods, so Shekau should go and look for goods to sell instead of Nigerian girls with future to change the country.”
Aremu said the rally was organised as part of the continuous protests not only in Nigeria ,but across the world, to mount pressure on government and security agencies to intensify efforts to release the over 200 abducted schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno state.
Aremu told the rally that nothing short of the unconditional return of the girls would be acceptable to labour and to Nigerian workers and Nigerian parents.
Speaking to the protesters, a human rights activist and President, Women Arise for Change Initiative, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, said it was disheartening to hear somebody who claimed to be leading people on the path to paradise to be talking of selling girls that are created by God to be future mothers, governors, doctors and business gurus.
He said: “We want Shekau and his cohorts to know that in this civilised world, the era of slave trade and captured fugitives are past, so they should release our girls to us immediately without any condition attached.
“We also want to tell the Boko Haram members that they have murdered sleep and they are not going to have rest unless they bring back our girls safe and healthy.”
Kaduna state Commissioner of Police, Alhaji Umar Shehu, who led a team of policemen to the venue, said he was there to ensure that there was no breakdown in law and order.
Policemen were strategically stationed around the Murtala Square to ensure that the protesters did not move out of the venue and no hoodlum from outside joined them.
