#Bring Back Our Girls

The #Bringbackourgirls has become the new battlefront for war on Twitter as the hashtag has generated an international outcry; one that possibly jolted Nigeria’s political leadership into action. The twitter hashtag cannot be undermined as the story it symbolises make it impossible to stay indifferent.  234 (or whatever the number) girls in the hands of wicked, blood sucking, demented men who have no regard for life or limb. Their ordeal, unimaginable at the hands of these horrible men.  These girls are future mothers, future scientists, future leaders an entire generation of young ladies held against their will in a forest makes us all uncomfortable.  The kidnapping of these girls is not an issue for feminists only as well. It concerns everybody in our Nigerian community, for what if those girls were your sisters or daughters?

Unfortunately, hashtag or not, the situation remains the same. A little back ground here for anyone who is oblivious to the story: 200 or so girls were abducted from their school dormitory in Chibok community in Borno State on April 14th as they were about to write their General Certificate of Education exams.  Borno State has been under a state of emergency for about a year now.  It is home to the notorious Sambisa forest where Boko Haram terrorists have their headquarters.                                

Here in England, like it is across the world, #Bringbackourgirls has generated quite a furore at the work place of the writer. A non-Nigerian colleague had made pasted posters on the Chibok girls around the work community.  They- most workers- found it hard to believe that the Presidential position on the kidnap was that the kidnap was a stunt engineered to cause maximum embarrassment to the Peoples’ Democratic Party.  Likewise, Mrs Patience Jonathan’s high profile involvement was hard to explain away. A video showing the Mrs Jonathan crying as she held a stake holders meeting with mothers and parties involved in Borno State was unfortunately ridiculed  and viewed in bad taste. But, it is Patience Jonathan: a market woman who is also the President’s wife. We can pardon her ignorance whilst we wonder why her husband allowed her to turn such a sensitive issue into a circus. The concurring view was that she was a distraction and a poor surrogate for the missing girls. The situation at hand is frankly not about the PDP neither is it about the APC, it is about the safety and security of all Nigerians, especially vulnerable ones like the soft targets taken.

Many international figures like Tinie Tempah, Chris Brown, Mary J. Blige, Dr Mike Murdoch and numerous others supported the noble cause, even more actively than the Nigerian government.  The American government has since offered to help with the intelligence side of things. We hope they would not be too disgusted with the Nigerians by the time all is said and done. The British government has a team on standby ready to help sort out the Boko Haram terrorists.

Frankly, one cannot say the Nigerian government has satisfied its duties on this matter. The lukewarm ness of Aso Rock until a couple of days ago has been most disconcerting. It is unthinkable what the Boko Haram terrorists would be doing or have done to those girls. In a country where education is the way out of generational poverty, those girls were not caught in their boyfriends’ houses or in a night club. They were kidnapped in school. It is curious why parents would let their daughters sleep vulnerable in an area known for the activities of the Boko Haram terrorists. The school should have been closed. Period. Having said that, apportioning blame is not the way forward. The best thing to do at this time is hope that under the leadership of the Nigerian government, the girls would be released. But, the recent Presidential chat revealed that even the President  was clueless as to the whereabouts of the girls.. His best shot was inaugurating a committee to help secure their release and ordering security chiefs to do all that is possible is to release those girls. We all know that command like others before it,  is a Presidential rubber stamp stand on absolutely nothing. Also, committees are usually a clear sign that the situation is hopeless.

Nigeria is in a cycle of self-destruction, this year has been an exceptionally bad year . Two bomb blasts in Nyanya, chronic unemployment, lack of adequate health care and myriad of other problems. Nigeria is struggling to keep it all together. Whilst the Nigerian government battle to make sense of Boko Haram and the country’s numerous problems, Boko Haram always seem a step ahead. Recently, it took responsibility for the kidnap threatening to  sell the girls. As if that was not enough, 8 more girls have been kidnapped from the nation’s capital.

The answers to our national problems lies not in the Presidency nor his team but in the power of ordinary Nigerians who are able to galvanise talking points from their Twitter handle and new media fronts.  Every angle you look in Nigeria, there is a moral deficit and a widening gap in equality. The Vice President’s loss was more important at a stage than the missing girls, retaining the Minister of Immigration’s portfolio has been more important than the death of the Nigerians who died during the Immigration recruitment fiasco, the Nigerians who died at Nyanja was not an excuse for the twerking dance of the President in Kano the day after the blasts.  The seeming inequality between Federal workers and ordinary Nigerians is a new low this government has taken. The truth is no longer spoken as it is sacrificed for the pay packet. Most people associated with the administration have to tow the official lines: ‘all is well with the country’.

Hopefully, the girls will be returned eventually and life hopefully will return to normal. Our prayers remain with the families of the girls and with the entire Chibok community. Hopefully, we can learn lessons from this saga in our collective journey as Nigerians with a voice.  The level of participation given to #bringbackourgirls should develop around the moribund areas of our social polity.



 Tundun Adeyemo

Published in TELL, this week(I think)