Former Minister of Education Dr Oby Ezekwesili has urged the Federal Government to halt the ongoing bloodshed in the country.

Apparently supporting the targeted killings claims, she said more than 90 per cent of the abducted Chibok girls were Christians.

In a statement yesterday, the former Minister of Education said: “Of what use are ‘leaders’ who do not value the lives of their people? Of what humanity are people in power and our society who defend such failures? “Of what future are a people who allow such evil to become normal in their country while they sit around to ‘debate’ about the mass killings of their fellow countrymen, women and children to determine if it is really ‘genocide’?”

She cited the 2014 abduction of about 300 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State and how Nigerian leaders argued until the matter got out of hand. Ezekwesili said: “In 2014, they came for our Chibok daughters and several others, Nigerians sat around debating politics while the parents of the girls cried in anguish, pleading ‘even to be believed that they are not scam parents’.

“Those that believed them, joined their cries, stood in empathy to ask governments to take constitutionally mandated, effective actions for the girls’ rescue. Their cries and demands fell on deaf ears and hardened hearts.”

“We cautioned that if the government failed to act decisively against the terrorists by allowing them to go unpunished, the inaction and absence of deterrence would embolden the organised deadly criminals.”