African Group Condemns UN for Suggesting Rescued Pregnant Chibok Girls Should Have Abortions

The Foundation for African Heritage (FACH), a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) based in Lagos has described as unconscionable, inhuman and scandalous the suggestion by the United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA) and some foreign NGOs that the rescued pregnant Chibok girls should be sent to the abortion clinics to have their babies aborted or that abortion be legalised in Nigeria, so that the pregnant Chibok girls can abort their babies.

Making a cash donation on behalf of the group for the rehabilitation of the girls at the office of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Abuja recently, Mr. Sonnie Ekwowusi stated that what the girls urgently needed at this moment was real healthcare, social welfare and counselling services that would enable them to be effectively reintegrated and re-absorbed in the society, so that they would continue living their lives as normal citizens of Nigeria.

Ekwowusi said having experienced unspeakable trauma, dehumanisation and violence in the hands of their Boko Haram captors, it is unreasonable and illogical to subject the girls to a traumatic, violent-wrecking and life-threatening abortion process.

Ekwowusi stated that the FACH members were offering free maternity homes and rehabilitation homes where the girls could willingly go to safely give birth to their babies and afterwards could give them out for legal adoption if, for any reasons, they do not want to keep them.

While receiving the cash donation on behalf of NEMA, Mr. Bitrus Samuel, thanked FACH for its generosity and public-spiritedness. He hoped that other NGOs and organisations in Nigeria would emulate FACH’s example in rehabilitating the Chibok girls and the internally-displaced persons presently housed in a Camp in Abuja.

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SOURCE: This Day