Three years have passed since more than 276 schoolgirls were abducted by members of the murderous Islamist sect, Boko Haram. Having advertised its gross incapacitation, having demonstrated in word and deed its cluelessness over the whereabouts of the abducted girls, the government, despite repeated promises to rescue the kidnapped girls has been at a loss over their location and condition. The world has looked away, but the torment continues, especially as Boko Haram is now deploying children as suicide bombers. Global awareness cannot, in itself, free the girls but it certainly can and should help. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign should be relaunched, and the tragedy of these girls must not be forgotten, even as international attention has moved on to other war-torn parts of the world. Nor should any effort be spared to save them.
Last year 21 of them were released after negotiations brokered by the Swiss government and the International Red Cross. Roughly 190 remain in captivity. Following his election, President Buhari publicly declared that his administration would defeat Boko Haram by the end of 2015, and later announced that the insurgents had been “technically defeated”. Yet, despite its technical defeat in 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations Nigeria Security Tracker indicates that so far this year the number of people killed by Boko Haram has exceeded 200. The multinational joint taskforce of troops from Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria has made progress with counter-insurgency, but more needs to be done not only in defeating Boko Haram, but in protecting communities that remain vulnerable to possible further attacks.
Amidst consistent bombings and killings, the news of the missing girls was even drowned by a plethora of routine government activities. After all, as then Information Minister Labaran Maku stated at a briefing, incidents like the kidnapping do not stop the government from working. But that was before the voice of the people triggered a groundswell of international reaction and a global social media campaign under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls that shamed the feeble government response. This slow, tacky and inept response of the government was viewed as deliberate, giving credence to all shades of interpretations. Was the government genuinely interested in the plight of the girls, their parents and well-wishers? Are Nigerian leaders so emotionally disconnected from the predicament of ordinary Nigerians? How would the President, Vice President, Senate President, any governor or minister have reacted if their daughters were so abducted?
Thanks to the commitment of Nigerian women and other influential women leaders around the world who mobilized their folks to consistently and tenaciously protest this scandalous inattention, the world has now come to appreciate the gravity of the tragedy. There is no doubt, therefore, that the inaction of the government, as observed in its obvious incapacitation, its lack of diligence, and seeming disregard for the plight of the masses and people outside the precinct of power, is responsible for the viral worldwide reaction to the abducted girls.
A recent article in the New York Times, “Boko Haram turns female captives into terrorists” clearly depicted the sinister plan to use the girls as weapons through food deprivation, rape and promises of eternal life if they fulfil suicide missions. The tactics described mirror the stories from women kidnapped and raped by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. According to the Internally Displaced Monitoring Center, since the insurgency began, nearly 2.2 million Nigerians have been internally displaced and at least another 100,000 have taken refuge in neighboring Chad, Niger, or Cameroon. These are the highest numbers of displaced persons in Africa, surpassing South Sudan. The most alarming part is that 58% of the internally displaced population are children; who need of food, shelter, healthcare, security and education.
In 2013, UNESCO reported that Nigeria had the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, with an alarming figure of more than 10.5 million. The attacks on schools have been part of Boko Haram’s strategy, further devastating an already compromised academic system. Hundreds of schools have been attacked across Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger and more than 2,000 schools remain closed due to the conflict. In Nigeria alone, about 600 teachers have been killed since the start of Boko Haram’s insurgency, according to UNICEF.
Several lessons derivable from the politics of the Chibok Girls abduction are instructive for Nigerian leaders, who must understand that the world has changed. It is crystal clear that the world is governed by citizens and not by people who sit in government houses; and that the supremacy of the citizens in governance is a well-established democratic culture, augmented by information technology. Which is why the global campaign; “Bring Back Our Girls” upon hitting the social media, was no longer a local affair, but an initiative of global publics that attracted the support of the most influential personalities, including then US First Lady, Michelle Obama. If Nigerian leaders still live in denial of this blunt fact, they condemn themselves to a fool’s paradise.
The Buhari administration can no longer act in the illusion that everything is under control; it must now accept that it has been living in denial and deceiving the populace. The Nigerian military has been giving the impression they were in charge of the situation. Big money was voted and resources deployed and emphatic promises were made by the military high command. Alas, as situation reports have revealed, men in the trenches are the most demoralized and the wonder remains if it was the same breed of Nigerian soldiers, who, on foreign missions, triumphed over other rebellions and insurgencies with remarkable success.
The tragedy of these girls must not be forgotten, and must be seen as one part of an ongoing and wider catastrophe, to which there is still no end in sight. The federal government is insisting that Boko Haram is not occupying any part of Nigerian territory, but in Nigeria and neighboring countries, notably Chad and Cameroon, Boko Haram continues to spread its terror, relentlessly attacking villages in murderous raids and seizing women and girls who are then reduced to slavery, sex abuse and torture. The situation has worsened since 2014. Human Rights Watch says Boko Haram is increasingly targeting schools. And a recent UNICEF report how the terrorist group is using children as “suicide” bombers. Nearly one out of every five such attacks conducted by Boko Haram last year used a child, and more than two-thirds of those children were girls. It is a tactic that leaves a trail of massacres. If there is any hope of ending this horrendous spiral of violence, there should be no rest for the government until the girls are found. Like all humanity, we cry from the heart: Bring Back Our Girls.
