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The initial opprobrium that greeted the kidnap of about 276 school girls from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, Northern Nigeria, fades into a conspiracy of silence in Nigeria and the world at large since their fate remains uncertain as the second anniversary of the incident comes up April 14

|  By Maureen Chigbo  |  Apr 18, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT  |

IF there is any good news that will thrill Nigerians and the world at large now, it is that President Muhammadu Buhari has at last rescued the Chibok Girls from their abductors. Were this to be the case, Buhari would have fulfilled one of his major campaign promises before he clocks one year in office. It would also wipe away albeit temporarily all the hardship Nigerians are currently going through with the worsening fuel scarcity and economic downturn.

More importantly, it will finally put to rest an issue that has bugged the conscience of the nation and caused so much disaffection in the country. Those who are still in doubt the girls were kidnapped will be convinced. And the world which rose in opprobrium over the incident will be rejoicing with Nigeria. But this is sadly not case.

Less than a week to the second anniversary of the kidnap of the school girls by Boko Haram terrorists on April 14, 2014, the heavens are not blazing forth in the firmament of Nigeria as it did when it first happened or even last year. In fact, it appears that there is now a conspiracy of silence as many activists groups are not announcing their plans to engage the federal government or the international community to bring back our girls as was the case a year ago. The echos of global call to #BringBackOurGirls is also not at all strident.

Apart from the promoters of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, not many Nigerians are talking about the fact that the schoolgirls are still missing for two long dreary years. Only very few media houses are still counting the days on the front page of newspapers. The United States has, last week, pledged to give the Nigerian government the necessary support to find and rescue the girls. Before now, such a commitment on the issue would have sparked a debate on social media. But that is not the case anymore. If appears that the parents of the missing girls are now wallowing alone in the sorrow as local and international support dims.  Hope of any rescue soonest appears to be dying as the Nigerian military too is proving not to have any serious positive clue as to the where about of the girls. This situation is troubling and raises the question as to whether modern technology, intelligence gathering technic failed the Chibok Girls?

As of Monday, April 5, only the members of #BringBackOurGirls campaign drew attention of the coming anniversary on social media. For instance, Joe Odumakin, human rights activist, went on Twitter to remind the federal government that it had 10 days to rescue the girls or the country would mark the second anniversary of the kidnap without knowing their whereabouts.

Oby Ezekwesili, former minister of education and leader of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign flittingly referred to the Chibok girls when she tweeted: “While I am totally uninspired by @MBuhari ‘s economic policies, the #CorruptionWar is real. Those being prosecuted for #BloodMoney are not victims. How can anyone being prosecuted for #BloodMoney be cast as a ‘victim’ when they created the real victims — our Chibok girls and dead Nigerians?”

It appears that the #BringBackOurGirls, BBOG, campaign is losing steam with the long period of time during which the girls have not been found. This is especially so given the put off way members of the campaign were treated when they met with President Buhari on the matter recently. But this should not be case. Otherwise the government and people of Nigeria and the world in general will be failing in the promises the made to the parents of the girls that they will help to find their missing daughters.

During the heady days following the kidnap incident, there were flurry of promises to Nigeria from almost all the world superpowers. The United States of America, Britain, France, Canada to China all pledged to help Nigeria find the missing girls. For instance,  Barack Obama, President, United States of America, USA, whiling denounced the Boko Haram sect, described the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls as “heartbreaking” and “outrageous” and called for an international response. He said: “This may be the event that helps to mobilise the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organisation that’s perpetrated such a terrible crime,” which he also described as “one of the worst regional or local terrorist organisations.”  On May 8, 2014, Obama said: “Everyday when I wake up, I think of the school girls in Nigeria or the children in Syria, makes me want to reach out to save those kids.”

Similarly, William Hague, British foreign minister, described the incident as disgusting, adding:  “What has happened here… the action of Boko Haram to use girls as the spoils of war, the spoils of terrorism, is disgusting. It is immoral,” he said. Hague had promised that Britain will provide practical help to Nigeria to rescue the school girls.

This was followed by David Cameron, British prime minister, who on May 7, 2014, saying the kidnap of the girls was not just a Nigerian issue but a global issue. “There are extreme Islamists around our world who are against education, against progress, against equality and we must fight them and take them on wherever they are,” Cameron told fellow members of British House of Commons:  “This is an act of pure evil. It’s time for united people across the planet to stand with Nigeria to help find these children and return them to their parents,” he said.

Also on the same day, France offered to send security service agents to Nigeria to help recover the abducted girls. Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister, was quoted as telling the nation’s lawmakers that “the president has instructed that we put the intelligence services at the disposal of Nigeria and neighbouring countries. “In the face of such ignominy, France must react. This crime cannot be left unpunished.”

Similarly, Li Keqiang, Chinese premier, of the Peoples’ Republic of China, also offered to assist in the effort to rescue the abducted girls,     including training of Nigeria’s military personnel for anti-insurgency operations.

Canada was not left out as Jason MacDonald, a spokesman for Stephen Harper, the prime minister, promised to supply surveillance equipment to help find the girls.

With all these promises and support from the world powers to help rescue the Chibok girls, why is it that two years after, the girls are still in captivity? Does it mean that the Boko Haram intelligence outfit is better and more efficient than that of all the superpowers? Why has the Nigerian governments starting from the time of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan failed woefully to rescue the girls after some military top brass told the Nigerian public that they have located the where about of the girls in Sambisa Forest and did not want to wage a frontal attack so that they can rescue the girls alive? What are they still waiting for to rescue the innocent girls who stand the risk of being violated, indoctrinated and brainwashed to engage in some nefarious activities like suicide bombing? This is certainly not against the mark giving the spate of young girls being used as suicide bombers by the Boko Haram terrorists in the country.

The answers to these troubling questions probably will throw more light on what exactly the government is doing to find the girls and disabused the minds of people that the government was all along deceiving the public about the true situation with the Chibok girls and that finding the Chibok girls is not a mission unaccomplished despite belated efforts by the previous administration of President Jonathan to rescue the girls.

The Wikipedia chronicled all the attempts so far made since the night of April 14, 2014, when a group of Boko Haram terrorists attacked the school in Chibok, Nigeria. They broke into the school, pretended to be guards, told the girls to get out and come with them. A large number of students were taken away in trucks, possibly into the Kondugaarea of the Sambisa Forest where Boko Haram were known to have fortified camps. Houses in Chibok were also burned down in the incident. The school had been closed for four weeks prior to the attack due to the deteriorating security situation, but students from multiple schools had been called in to take final exams in physics.

There were 530 students from multiple villages registered for the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, although it is unclear how many were in attendance at the time of the attack. The children were aged 16 to 18 and were in their final year of school. A number of the students escaped the kidnappers in two groups. According to the police, approximately 276 children were taken in the attack, of whom 53 had escaped as of May 2, 2014. Other reports said that 329 girls were kidnapped, 53 had escaped and 276 were still missing.

The Amnesty International had said the Nigerian military had four hours’ advance warning of the kidnapping, but failed to send reinforcements to protect the school. Nigeria’s armed forces have confirmed that the Nigerian military had four-hour advance notice of the attack but said that their over-extended forces were unable to mobilize reinforcements.

According to Wikipedia, Jonathan N.C. Hill of King’s College, London, pointed out that Boko Haram kidnapped these girls after coming increasingly under the influence of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and asserts that the group’s goal is to use girls and young women as sexual objects and as a means of intimidating the civilian population into non-resistance. Hill describes the attacks as similar to kidnapping of girls in Algeria in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Non-Muslim students have been forced to convert to Islam. The girls have been forced into marriage with members of Boko Haram, with a reputed “bride price” of ₦2,000 each ($12.50/£7.50). Many of the students were taken to the neighbouring countries of Chad and Cameroon, with sightings reported of the students crossing borders with the militants, and sightings of the students by villagers living in the Sambisa Forest. The forest is considered a refuge for Boko Haram. Local residents have been able to track the movements of the students with the help of contacts across north eastern Nigeria.

On May 2, 2014, the police said they were still unclear as to the exact number of students kidnapped. They asked parents to provide documents so an official count could be made, as school records had been damaged in the attack.  Jonathan, spoke publicly about the kidnapping for the first time on May 4, 2014, saying the government was doing everything it could to find the missing girls. At the same time, he blamed parents for not supplying enough information about their missing children to the police.

Nonetheless, a video in which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnappings emerged surface on the internet on May 5, 2014. Shekau claimed that “Allah instructed me to sell them…I will carry out his instructions.” and “Slavery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them slaves.” He said the girls should not have been in school and instead should have been married since girls as young as nine are suitable for marriage.

Following the kidnapping incident, Boko Haram again abducted another eight girls, aged between 12–15, from northeastern Nigeria, a number later raised to eleven.

Chibok is primarily a Christian village and Shekau acknowledged that many of the girls seized were not Muslims: “The girls that have not accepted Islam, they are now gathered in numbers…and we treat them well the way the Prophet Muhammad treated the infidels he seized.”

At least 300 residents of the nearby town of Gamboru Ngala were killed in an attack by Boko Haram militants after Nigerian security forces had left the town to search for the kidnapped students on May 5, 2014. Former Boko Haram negotiator, Shehu Sani, stated that the group wanted to swap the abducted girls for its jailed members On May 9, 2014. Also, Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State in Nigeria, on May 11, 2014, said that he had sighted the abducted girls and that the girls were not taken across the borders of Cameroon or Chad. Boko Haram,

On May 12, released another video showing about 130 kidnapped girls, each clad in a hijab and a long Islamic chador, and demanded a prisoner exchange.

A journalist-brokered deal to secure the release of the girls in exchange for 100 Boko Haram prisoners held in Nigerian jails was scrapped at a late stage on May 24, 2014, after President Jonathan consulted with U.S., Israeli, French and British foreign ministers in Paris, where the consensus was that no deals should be struck with terrorists, and that a solution involving force was required.

Alex Badeh, Nigerian chief of Defence Staff, On May 26, 2014, announced that the Nigerian security forces had located the kidnapped girls, but ruled out a forceful rescue attempt for fears of collateral damage.

It was also reported On May 30, 2014, that a civilian militia in the Baale region of Northeastern Nigeria found two of the kidnapped girls raped, “half-dead,” and tied to a tree. Villagers said the Boko Haram group had left the two girls, and killed four other disobedient girls and buried them; 223 were still missing.

Also, Andrew Pocock, British high commissioner to Nigeria, said that a couple of months after the kidnapping a group of up to 80 of the Chibok girls were seen by American ‘eye in the sky’ technology but nothing was done. The girls, a camp and evidence of ground transport vehicles were spotted next to a local landmark called the ‘Tree of Life’ in the Sambisa forest.

As the search for the Chibok girl went on, it was reported that on June 24, 2014, that 91 more women and children were abducted in other areas of Borno State. One source estimated in June that there could be as many as 600 girls held by Boko Haram in three camps outside Nigeria.

However, on June 26, it was announced that Levick, a Washington, D.C. public relations firm, had received “a contract worth more than $1.2 million” from the government of Nigeria to work on “the international and local media narrative” surrounding the Chibok schoolgirl kidnapping.

On July 1, a businessman suspected of carrying out the kidnappings of the school girls, as well as the bombing of a busy market in northeastern Nigeria, was arrested. Military sources said that he was also accused of helping the Islamist militant group kill the traditional leader Idrissa Timta. This was followed by the arrest of Zakaria Mohammed (‘the Butcher’), a high-ranking member of Boko Haram, at Darazo-Basrika Road while fleeing from the counter insurgency operations going on around the Balmo Forest on July 15,

On October 12, 2014, it was reported that four girls from the original kidnapped group had escaped and walked three weeks to freedom in Nigeria. They said they had been held in a camp in Cameroon and raped every day.

Stephen Davis, a former Anglican clergyman, contacted three Boko Haram commanders who said they might be prepared to release Chibok schoolgirls and went to Nigeria in April 2015. He was given proof of life (a video of them being raped) and was told 18 were seriously ill, some with HIV. Davis got initial agreement that Boko Haram would release these ill girls. However, after three attempts the deal fell through when another group abducted the girls believing they could make money out of them and Davis left Nigeria. Davis commented that it was not difficult to locate the five or six main Boko Haram camps. He could find them on Google Earth. The Nigerian Department of Security Service later held a press conference to say that the Davis attempt at rescuing the was a scam.

Nevertheless, hopes were raised that the 219 remaining girls might soon be released after the Nigerian army announced a truce between Boko Haram and government forces on October 17, 2014. The announcement coincided with the six-month anniversary of the girls’ capture and followed a month of negotiations mediated in Saudi Arabia by Idriss Déby, Chadian president,

The announcement was met with doubt as this was not the first time the Nigerian government had claimed a breakthrough in negotiations with the Islamic militant group – it had to backtrack on a previous announcement in September after saying the girls had been released and were being held in military barracks.

In May 2015, it was reported that the Nigerian military had reclaimed most of the areas previously controlled by Boko Haram in Nigeria including many of the camps in the Sambisa forest where it was suspected the Chibok girls had been kept. Although many women had been freed, none of the Chibok girls had been found. It was reported that some of the girls had been sold into slavery for N2,000 (about $10) each, others had been forcibly married to Boko Haram fighters and they may have been killed. Kassim Shettima, Borno state governor, said he suspected the Chibok girls were being kept in underground bunkers.

In January 2016, the Nigerian military were reported to have freed 1,000 women held captive by Boko Haram but none of them were Chibok girls.

Many Nigerians are pained that the Chibok girls are still in captivity. Ebongabasi Ekpe-Juda, security expert, expressed mixed feelings about their disappearance. “At a time I gave up that they won’t come back again but with the recent actions of the Nigerian soldiers rescuing people in hundreds, I think there is hope that they can rescue the girls and that they are alive somewhere. You remembered that a suicide bomber was arrested in Cameroon and she claimed to be one of the Chibok girls, so I think that from the Boko Haram insurgents know that those girls are valuable for us as a nation. I want to believe that those girls are still alive it might not be all of them but some of them are still alive”.

On why there are fewer clamours by the international community over the rescue of Chibok girls, Ekpe-Juda said that people are considering two years to be too long and that those girls are no longer alive. He said that Nigeria should be the one to lead the clamour for their rescue before the international community could offer support. “Nigerian government is not showing sufficient interest in the matter because we are not talking about the Chibok girls as we are supposed to. So other countries are taking a cue from us. Government should embark on campaign in rescuing the girls, discuss it at every forum and make it a point of duty for the international community to support us in their rescue bid.”

Similarly, Abdulaziz Ibrahim, lawyer, thinks that Nigerian journalists have not done anything really in the aspect of doing investigation to get to the roots of some of the issues that was raise in this Chibok issue. “If you look at reports in the media you will see that most of our traditional media rely on the foreign media. I think a few days ago, the US African Commander said something on the issue. And yesterday again, I read an article in the New York Times where a lady was saying that some girls that are presumed to be Chibok girls were trained on how to slaughter people and detonate bombs.  Forget the shenanigans of the politicians like Governor Ayo Fayose saying that the girls are not missing actually. Everybody knows that Fayose had been seeking for attention. For this two years anniversary, I hear there will be prayers today at the Unity Fountain Centre in Abuja and even on Sunday.”

He, however, observed that people like Oby Ezekwesili have been very resilient in carrying out the campaign. “On my part, I think the whole country is in crisis and the anniversary is upon us. There is no power and energy, practically nothing is working. So those campaigning for the rescue of the girls have tried. But they were more outspoken during the President Goodluck Jonathan administration and APC took advantage of that but now they are in government they seem not to talk about it. Talking about Chibok girls is getting on their nerves. We hope to God that these girls will be rescued because the African Commander was saying that where the girls are right now there is no way the military cannot just walk in a rescue them”.

He thinks that the foreign media make it look as if our government is doing nothing and the news about this Chibok girls are fading and Nigerian media are not doing enough to lead the campaign. “Apart from Daily Trust, Leadership and Guardian newspapers which are counting the days and TVC, also trying to create a segment for the Chibok girls, others are doing nothing,” he observed.

Whatever, Ray Echebiri, chief executive officer of the Centre for Financial Journalism says he does know if there is a conspiracy of silence over the kidnapped Chibok girls. But the fact remains that we are talking about 200 plus people while the Boko Haram insurgency has claimed thousands of life like the people who died in the Madala bomb blast. For me I feel pained. I don’t want to put myself in the position of their parents. According to Echebiri, “If the girls were killed, it will be easier to get over it. Now, somebody takes them, you don’t know if they are alive or what’s happening to them. It is difficult to put behind this kind of experience. It is tormenting. It is not an experience you will wish on your enemy.”

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