Chimamanda Adichie Says Nigeria Does Not Need Foreign Assistance To save "Chibok Girls"

Award winning Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, expressed her opinion about the rescue of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls, while speaking at the 2014 Hay Festival for Literature and Arts in Wales. Chimamanda said that Nigeria does not need foreign aid to rescue the girls, instead the Nigerian military should be well equipped. She also said that the hunters in the area can also be of immense help in rescuing the girls. Hear her:

“Now we have American drones helping us in this forest and even the French have sent in people – shouldn’t they be fixing their own economy? We can solve our own damn problems. I’m sure that there are hunters in that area who know that forest very well. Why haven’t they been used? Why aren’t we depending on them? What we need is a better equipped military force, a better trained military. We don’t need Americans to send people in, we can do di==this ourselves.”

She also acknowledged the effort of the public in the #bringbackourgirls# campaign. She said that it went a long way in making the government sit up:

“It was very much a grassroots social media Nigerian campaign. The fact that westerners are sharing in something started locally is fine with me. I recognize that the campaign made a difference. People paid attention and then the (Nigerian) government had to sit up a little bit.”