By Sam Eyoboka

FATHER of Leah Sharibu, Mr. Nathan Sharibu, has denied reports that his family has instituted a legal suit against the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, over alleged dereliction of their statutory duties to secure the release of the only abducted Dapchi schoolgirl still in the captivity of insurgents.

•Leah and Mr. Sharibu

According to the reports, mother of Leah, Rebecca Sharibu, had filed a suit, dated September 19, 2018 with no FCH/L/cs/1528/18, at the Federal High Court Lagos, but made available to newsmen in Jos, against the two officers. The plaintiff, the purported court papers claimed, sought N500 million as compensation for the indignities and human deprivations which, she said, her daughter had suffered since her abduction in February 2018.

But in a telephone interview, yesterday, the father of the abducted girl, Mr. Sharibu, a man of very few words, denied any knowledge of the suit, stressing that the reports came to him as a rude shock.

The exchange between him and Sunday Vanguard went thus:

Did you go to court?

No, I don’t know anything about the reports. I don’t know anything concerning any court action.

So, who did?

As I am talking to you, so it is. I don’t know anything about that thing. I just saw it as everybody did, on the Internet. That’s how I saw it but to tell you the truth, I don’t know anything concerning the suit.

Was it your wife that instituted the case without your knowledge?

As I am telling you now, I don’t know anything about it.

Did you ask her?

Yes. I have asked her and she told me she was not the one. Even yesterday when I saw the reports, I was confused. I was confused yesterday because I did not understand this kind of thing.

Has anybody spoken to you that they did it on your behalf? Any lawyer or human rights campaigners…

No. Nobody has spoken to me on the issue. How can I go to court when my daughter is still in captivity? If to say my daughter has been released ehen. So, there was no such thing from me.

Mr. Sharibu then appealed to the media, which, according to him, has stood behind the family since February 19, 2018 to help correct the impression while appealing to the Federal Government to discountenance the reports and hasten to bring back his daughter.

“All her mates have just started another term at school. I plead with government to help the family to release my daughter for her to join her school from where she left off. The trauma is too much for us to bear,” he stated.

Also responding, the immediate past President of United Church of Christ in Nigeria, UNCCN, otherwise known in Hausa as Haddaiya Eklisiyan Christi ah Nigeria, HEKAN, in Kaduna, Rev. Emmanuel Dziggau, who spoke ahead of Leah’s father’s denial, said the purported legal suit filed against the IGP and the Attorney General was not a wise thing to do.

“Instead they (Leah’s parents) should sue the Federal Government for negligence, not doing much to release this girl when her Muslim friends were released on March 21. She has to claim that, by right, the negotiations that ensured the release of the other girls should have been extended to her. Suing the government for negligence could have been better than making claims of millions,” the old cleric said.

Dziggua wondered who had advised Leah’s parents to take that line of action “because that’s to tell you that they want to allow the girl to perish, they are claiming compensation on her”.

He added, “I think it is not a wise thing to do. When I saw the report in social media, I wasn’t happy because it did not align with what the people are fighting for concerning the girl. The parents are now defeating the morale of the movements. In fact, it’s not right”.