Leah Sharibu's Abduction: Akande Urges Renewed Government Efforts After 8 Years

Eight years after schoolgirl Leah Sharibu was abducted from Dapchi, former presidential aide Laolu Akande has urged the Nigerian government to urgently recommence efforts for her release. Akande characterized her extended captivity as a national disgrace and a burden on the nation's conscience.

Speaking on Channels Television's Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, he expressed concern that public focus on Leah's plight has diminished significantly as her years in captivity continue to accumulate.

“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 stated.

Leah was among the students taken from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State, in 2018 by terrorists.

Although negotiations eventually led to the freedom of 104 out of the 105 surviving girls, Leah was deliberately held back by her captors.

“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 recounted.

Now 22 years old, Leah has become, in Akande's view, "a symbol of individual resilience and unwavering faith in her Christian grounding." However, this symbolism masks a grim 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 a parallel between Leah's situation and that of the schoolgirls abducted from Chibok in 2014, many of whom remain missing over 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 remarked.

On the eighth anniversary of Leah's abduction, Akande implored the administration of President Bola Tinubu to make her rescue a paramount national priority.

“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 urged.