The Nigerian government should redouble efforts to prevent any further abduction of children by the Islamist insurgent group, Boko Haram, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has urged.

The call is contained a report titled “Preventing Boko Haram Abductions of Schoolchildren in Nigeria”, published on Thursday by the Brussels-based conflict research and peace advocacy organisation. The publication came just ahead of the fourth anniversary of Boko Haram’s kidnap of over 200 schoolgirls from Chibok on April 14, 2014.

To strengthen security for children and schools in the North East, Crisis Group calls on the government to deploy more security personnel to the region. It urges the army to pull out personnel from essentially police duties countrywide and concentrate them on the north-east. It also urges the police to recall most of its 150,000 personnel that are guarding politicians and so-called VIPs, and re-assign some of them to the region.

The report calls for sustained effort towards rescuing the over 100 Chibok girls still held by the insurgents. It also calls for release of Leah Sharibu, the lone girl still held by a Boko Haram faction, since its 19 February abduction of over 100 school girls in Dapchi, Yobe state, as well as all other children abducted by insurgents over the years.

Crisis Group urges the federal government to launch a credible investigation into the circumstances that enabled the Dapchi abduction. Noting that the National Security Adviser to the President had already commenced an investigation, it urges President Muhammadu Buhari to go beyond that and constitute an independent, non-partisan committee including members from outside the military, security and governmental agencies, to probe the incident.

The organisation also urges the government to publish the probe’s report – along with that of the Gen Ibrahim Sabo committee that investigated the 2014 Chibok incident – and implement their recommendations.

ICG further calls on the government to probe inadequate implementation of the Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) since it was launched in 2014, particularly the non-provision of security infrastructure in schools.

Calling on governments, at all levels, to renew efforts towards advancing the scheme, it particularly urges state and local government education authorities to ensure that schools introduce various measures envisaged in the SSI. Such measures, it says, include early warning systems linking school administrators, community residents and local security agencies.

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