President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday approved the setting up of a committee to investigate the abduction of the 219 girls from Government Secondary, Chibok, Borno State. A statement by Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said that the panel would be named by the National Security Adviser, NSA, General Babagana Munguno soon.

The Chibok girls were abducted from their school in April 2014. The statement said the investigation would seek to, among other things, unravel the remote and immediate circumstances leading to the kidnap of the girls by Boko Haram terrorists as well the other events, actions and inactions that followed the incident. Shehu said in the statement that President Buhari also assured parents of the Chibok girls that he had been doing his best and would continue to do everything possible to rescue the girls and re-unite them with their families.

The President, who spoke at a closed-door meeting with some parents of the abducted girls, representatives of the Chibok community and members of the Bring Back Our Girls movement at the Conference Hall of the State House, emphasised that he remained fully committed to his pledge to do all within his powers to save the girls, the statement noted. According to the President, "I assure you that I go to bed and wake up every day with the Chibok girls on my mind. "The unfortunate incident happened before this government came into being.

"What have we done since we assumed office? We re-organized the military, removed all the service chiefs and ordered the succeeding service chiefs to deal decisively with the Boko Haram insurgency. "In spite of the terrible economic condition we found ourselves in, we tried to get some resources to give to the military to reorganize and equip, retrain, deploy more troops and move more forcefully against Boko Haram. "And you all know the progress we have made. When we came in Boko Haram was in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno. Boko Haram has now been reduced to areas around Lake Chad.