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Since their abduction on Monday, April 14, 2014, it has been an herculean task to rescue or get the release of more than 190 Chibok schoolgirls in captivity of Boko Haram insurgents. That notwithstanding, everyone who cares want to keep hope alive even in a seemingly hopeless situation
| By Olu Ojewale | Apr 24, 2017 @ 01:00 GMT |
FRIDAY, April 14, is Good Friday for all Christians all over the world as they mark the death of Jesus Christ on the cross preceding His resurrection on the third day. But for Nigerians, that day is a sad reminder of the memory of three years ago when more than 200 innocent schoolgirls were abducted from their school in Chibok, Borno State. More than 190 of the girls are still in the captivity of Boko Haram insurgents today.
As expected, the situation has the nation in a sombre mood. Ahead of the day of the third anniversary, the BringBackOurGirls, BBOG, group which spearheads the campaign for the rescue of the abducted girls, on Friday, April 7, began its Global Week of Action at the Unity Fountain, Abuja.
There, members gathered to start the opening session of the scheduled seven-day of activities to mark three years of the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls. The BBOG group has been using the campaign to demand transparency and accountability from the Nigerian government about the status of the effort to rescue the girls.
The group also claimed that the federal government was handling the case of the remaining missing girls with laxity.
On Wednesday, April 12, Amnesty International, AI, made a similar observation when it called on the Nigerian government to intensify efforts to secure the release of the remaining 195 school girls in captivity. The AI which joined the seven-day global week of action declared by the BBOG group to mark the third anniversary of the abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014, said in a statement signed by Makmid Kamara, its country director: “Boko Haram continues to abduct women, girls and young men who are often then subjected to horrific abuses, including rape, beatings and being forced into suicide bombing missions.”
The statement said further: “Sadly, many such abductions go unnoticed and unreported by the media. This has left many parents and relatives without any hope of being reunited with their loved ones.
“These appalling abductions and other attacks, some of which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, are carried out by Boko Haram on an almost daily basis.
“They must stop. Today, we remember and lend solidarity to the families of the Chibok girls as well as the thousands of other women, girls and men abducted, killed or displaced by Boko Haram.”
In its usual manner, the BBOG group, led by Aisha Yesufu and Oby Ezekwesili, its conveners, again on Wednesday held a solidarity march from its base at the Unity Fountain in the Central Business District of Abuja to the federal secretariat junction of the Presidential Villa, carrying a banner with the inscription ‘I March for ChibokGirls.’
After their about three kilometres trek, members of the group stood at the junction to register their disappointment with the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. In her address, Yesufu said that it would be three years on Friday since the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted, and asked rhetorically: “What is the crime of the Chibok girl? Is it because she is poor or is it because she wants to be educated?”
She went further: “Our sisters have spent three years in captivity just because they dared to be educated. Every Nigerian must be protected by the Nigerian state.
“We have said it repeatedly and also again, if the Chibok girls were daughters of the rich, or belong to the political class, will they still be in captivity for three years?
“If it was Zara Buhari or Kiki Osinbajo that was in captivity, will they have to be standing and making demands for three years? President Muhammadu Buhari must remember that he campaigned using the Chibok girls. He said he was going to rescue them immediately.
“What is he doing? Why is there silence from this administration that campaigned using our Chibok girls? Why are the Chibok girls’ parents begging to be heard, begging to be told what is going on?”
Thus, Yesufu enjoined Nigerians to join forces to rescue the Chibok girls from captivity.
“Rescue of our Chibok girls is not a privilege, it is their rights as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari, the same way you campaigned in 2014/2015, you must remember that our Chibok girls are still in captivity,” she said.
Similarly, Ezekwesili spoke on the imperativeness of rescuing the girls from their present predicament. “Our Chibok girls have been in a state of endangerment since almost three years. In two days, it will be three years that they have been in the captivity of terrorists. How can a nation forget this fact of the role of a state in the lives of citizens?
“Our Chibok girls do not deserve the injustice given by the two governments in this country. The government under which they were abducted pretended that Chibok girls did not exist for many days before it took delayed and tentative action.
“And then a government that promised to make our Chibok girls priority has now been in government for about two years and it has not in any way treated Chibok schoolgirls in any form that is materially different from what was the case in the past,” Ezekwesili said.
Also on Thursday, April 13, the BBOG group held a protest match in Lagos.
However, President Buhari is not unmindful of the agitation of Nigerians concerning the plight of the 195 Chibok girls in captivity. On the eve of the third anniversary of the abduction of the girls, Buhari on Thursday, April 13, appealed to the parents of the missing Chibok school girls to keep hope alive on the return of their children, saying that he also shared in their feelings.
Buhari said: “As a parent, I am eternally grateful to God that some of the girls were found alive and have been reunited with their families. Government is doing all within its powers to reintegrate the freed girls to normal life. Furthermore, government is in constant touch through negotiations, through local intelligence to secure the release of the remaining girls and other abducted persons unharmed…. Like I have repeatedly said, the federal government is willing to bend over backwards to secure the release of the remaining Chibok girls. We have reached out to their captors, through local and international intermediaries, and we are ever ready to do everything within our means to ensure the safe release of all the girls.
“I wish to reassure the parents of the Chibok girls, all well-meaning Nigerians, organisations and the international community that as a government, we are unrelenting on the issue of the safe return of our children. I trust God that soon, our collective efforts will be rewarded with the safe return of our schoolgirls to their families, friends and their communities.”
Earlier on Tuesday, April 11, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo made a similar declaration at an interaction with journalists in the state house in Abuja. Osinbajo said the federal government was very committed to the release of the girls and was in negotiation with the Boko Haram for their release.
The vice president hinted that one of the challenges of freeing the girls was the existence of two factions in Boko Haram, with each faction holding on to some of the girls. One of the factions is led by Abubakar Shekau, the erstwhile leader of the group, while a breakaway faction is led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, believed to be a son of the late Mohammed Yusuf, founder of the group. Osinbajo, however, said the Buhari administration was very committed to the release of the remaining Chibok girls and other captives held by the terrorists. “It is a matter of conscience that concerns everyone,” he said.
That notwithstanding, the House of Representatives would want the federal government to expedite action on its negotiation for the release of all the remaining girls from captivity. The motion which led to the pronouncement was moved on the floor of the House by Asabe Vilita Bashir on Wednesday, April 12.
Leading debate on the motion, Bashir pointed out that the executive arm of government had on October 2016, when 21 of the girls were released, informed the nation that government was negotiating with Boko Haram for the release of 83 out of the remaining 195 abducted girls.
“Friday, 14th of April, 2017, will mark three years since the abduction of the girls, yet 195 of them are still in captivity and negotiation for their release seems to be taking too long”, she said.
The lawmaker expressed concern about the safety of the abducted girls as three years was too long a period for them to remain in captivity considering they risk being subjected to more untold hardship, slavery, molestation, abuse, rape, pregnancy and forceful marriage in the hands of their abductors.
Thus, the House also mandated its committee on Women Affairs to ascertain the condition and rehabilitation progress so far made by the released 21 girls and report back to it within three weeks.
The same spirit of anxiety, despondence and mistrust was prevalent among Chibok communities three years on after the kidnapping of their daughters. As if that is not bad enough, reports said that residents of Chibok communities of Kantikari, Pwarangiliim, Kopchi and Takwilashu were still constantly under Boko Haram attacks.
In any case, three years on after the abduction, parents of the 195 schoolgirls still in captivity would rather want the nightmare to end sooner than later. Some of the parents in various media interviews would be relieved to see the end of the whole unwholesome incubus. One of such parents is Amos Mustapha, who gave the name of his abducted child as Ruth. Mustapha said: “My daughter is the type any parent would wish to have; brilliant, obedient and dutiful. Since the abduction, we have not heard from her. It is now three years since the incident happened. We don’t even know whether she is still alive or dead. “All we can say as parents is that God should have mercy. As we speak, our communities of Kautikari and Paya Yesu are still unsafe as Boko Haram continues to attack at will.
“And since the 2014 attack, our children have stopped going to school because no school operates here anymore. No hospital either. Even the little foodstuffs we managed to produce have been looted.”
Similarly, Modu Usman, another parent, lamented the continued absence of her abducted daughter (name withheld). Usman said: “Now that Easter is fast approaching, I still reflect on the fact that my daughter will not celebrate the festive period with me as it has been in the last two years. My daughter was brilliant and dedicated to God. “At a point, she was the choir mistress in our church in Chibok. How I wish I can see even her dead body and bury it, rather than to continue thinking of her condition in the hands of the insurgents on daily basis.”
Usman’s wife also spoke, saying: “It is even better for me to have had a miscarriage when I was pregnant and I was expecting to be delivered of our abducted child than to experience what we are going through. The incident has affected my health. I became hypertensive two days after the abduction; and, since then, my BP has been on the upswing. There is nothing I can say; it has happened. It is bad, but there is nothing we can do as parents.”
Also lamenting about the situation, Habiba Chiroma, another mother, said that inasmuch as she would not like to blame the current administration for its inability to rescue the girls, “the fact remains that government is a continuous process, and all what we can tell the president is that we need our daughters back home.”
Zanna Modu Usman, district head of Chibok, said that the impact of the abduction would forever remain in the minds of the community members and that his people, especially the parents of the abducted school girls, would never feel the impact of the military in the fight against insurgency until the girls still held by Boko Haram were rescued and reintegrated into the society. “It is unfortunate, pitiful and disheartening that three years after insurgents stormed Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok and went away with the girls, government and security agencies were yet to live up to expectation,” Usman said.
The Chibok schoolgirls ordeal actually started when Boko Haram insurgents seized 276 pupils from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on the night of Monday, April 14, 2014. About 57 of the girls managed to escape in the immediate aftermath of the abduction.
The kidnap has since become a hot political issue in the country, with the government and military criticised for their handling of the incident and the failure to rescue all of the girls.
Even since then, AI reported that about 2,000 had been abducted by Boko Haram since 2014, with many of the women used as sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers.
The BBOG began its campaign for the rescue of the Chibok girls two weeks after they were abducted on April 14, 2014.
No fewer than 195 of the girls are still with their Boko Haram abductors. Negotiations between the federal government and the Boko Haram had led to the release of 21 of the girls in October 2016, while another three were freed by soldiers.
On 16 October, 2016 the Presidency stated that the ISIL-allied faction of Boko Haram was willing to negotiate the release of 83 more of the girls. According to a statement from the Presidency, the splinter group stated that the rest of the girls were under the control of Shekau-led faction.
Two days later, Pogu Bitrus, chairman of the Chibok Development Association, claimed that more than 100 of the missing girls apparently did not want to return home because they had either been brainwashed or were fearful of the stigma they will receive.
On November 5, 2016, another girl named Maryam Ali Maiyanga was found and rescued by the Nigerian Army along with a baby by the Nigerian Army. Sani Usman, a brigadier and the Army spokesman, said that they discovered her in Pulka of Borno State while screening escapees from Boko Haram’s Sambisa forest base. She was confirmed to be one of the kidnapped girls by Bring Back Our Girls.
Rakiya Abubakar, another one of the kidnapped girls, was found by the Nigerian Army along with a 6-month-old baby while they were interrogating suspects detained in army raids on the Sambisa forest in the last few weeks. Her identity was later confirmed by Bring Back Our Girls group.
That notwithstanding, the reason why Chibok was attacked is that 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,” he said.
Despite losing most of the territory they controlled at some point, including the dreaded Sambisa forest to Nigerian troops, the insurgents have kept hold of the 195 girls.
To demonstrate efforts being put to rescuing the girls, the military on January 16, this year took some representatives of the BBOG group to the North-East to observe efforts being made by soldiers to free the remaining abducted Chibok schoolgirls. The group joined a federal government delegation made up Lai Mohammed, minister of Information; Mansur Dan-Ali, his counterpart for defence, and Sadiq Abubakar, the chief of Air Staff, for the tour.
The forest was a Boko Haram stronghold and the location the terror group was believed to be hiding the abducted schoolgirls. But the search of the forest has yet to produce the abducted girls.
Ify Onabu, a businesswoman, said she was confused as there seemed to be conflicting signals coming from the government about the true situation of things. “A few weeks ago, they said they had defeated Boko Haram comprehensively. Question is: how do you negotiate with a defeated enemy? The practice, history teaches us, is to impose your will over a defeated enemy and not offer any kind of concessions whatsoever,” Onabu said.
Also, Uche Okwunna, a commentator, accused the government of merely using the issues of Chibok girls and corruption to deceive Nigerians to get votes. “If the Nigerian army has taken hold of Sambisa forest yet those girls numbering more than 195 were not found then take it or leave it those missing girls if truly there is any are living in Aso-rock or with Oby Ezekwesili in a secluded/hidden place because Oby Ezekwesili is Chibok girls and Chibok girls is Oby,” Okwuna said and also asked the government to give more information on the faceless group being spoken with for the release of the girls.
But the likes of Taidi Jonathan, a lawyer, believes that government is doing its best given the current situation. He said that the Nigerian government had demonstrated in ending Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, while also expressing confidence that the remaining school girls would also be rescued alive soon.
“With President Muhammadu Buhari’s political will to end the activities of insurgents in the country, the military personnel should do more to accomplish the task,” Jonathan said.
Indeed, a lot of Nigerians, even the international community would want to see an end to the Chibok schoolgirls abduction episode, but how much longer we would all have to wait is not so visible. In the meantime, the Bring Back Our Girls remains not just a slogan but a statement of aspiration of what Nigerians would want to see happened!
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