Our Special Correspondent
Blessing Akele
Benin City, 14th 2015
Time passes inexhaustible also for the Chibok school-girls of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. It was the 14th of April 2014, when the world heard the news of the kidnapping of about 300 secondary school-girls from their place of study by members of the Boko Haram terrorist group.
The news was doubtlessly extraordinary and to effect. In fact, it went viral on the world’s media, it aroused the dismay of the sociopolitical influential persona: Michelle Obama, Ban Ki Mon and others, creating a human solidarity chain, along with a firm request directed to the Nigerian Federal government enjoining them to do all that is necessary to find the young girls immediately, with a specific hash tag #Bringbackourgirls still on the network up till now.
It appears the Chibok girls have disappeared into thin air. After the first 3, 4 months the news concerning the whereabouts of the young girls simply faded out. Since then, in Nigeria, the question has no longer been debated also because it was clear, the Federal government had “urgent and superior” matters to handle: the presidential election programme. A duty that has been keeping Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and counterparts frenetically busy even before the execution of the Chibok kidnapping.
From day one of the Chibok girls abduction the event, on its own, appeared opaque: the dynamics; the numbers of schoolgirls supposedly kidnapped; the declarations, inconsistent with an odious act such as that of an abduction, offered by the girls, that escaped from the Sambisa forest (?) – the dry climate and parched land of northern Nigeria can develop bush, it isn’t the southern region with forest given its tropical rain – where they were held in distrain and in addition to the tepid attitude toward the case by the Federal government, by the Intelligence Agencies, as well as the Nigerian Army, that was incapacitated to go searching, inch by inch, the Sambisa bush stronghold of the militants, for the young girls.
In short, there has been a trail of somewhat absurd information to make one clearly think that the kidnapping wasn’t real but a make-believe, i.e., it was not authentic. It was an act of sociopolitical pressure from the northern leadership adverse to the out-going Jonathan’s administration.
In other words, according to this thesis that is gaining more ground, the Boko Haram members received precise instruction from the northern political circle to “kidnap” those young girls. For example, it is to be noted that the gathering and the transportation of the young girls wasn’t an operation that took place all at once. The initial version that saw all of them conveyed away in Lorries was believed and denied by the statement of facts given by the escapee Chibok schoolgirls. The news of the mass-abduction was kept secret until the last numbers of girl planned for kidnapping was reached and then, it was widely-circulated.
As a matter of fact, till today the motive of the so-called abduction is mysterious, it isn’t for us to know. Kidnapping that we can equally define as ‘a duly organized pick-up’ of the school-girls. If it were to be true, that it was a political move based on a formidable argument such as lack of internal security, and so, an instrument against Jonathan’s government as a way of underlining and rendering obvious his government’s incapacity to guarantee the protection of the Nigerian citizens, we must admit that the operation was absolutely successful.
In Nigeria, the so much feared post-presidential election downfall of the social democratic system didn’t occur and now, Mohammadu Buhari, from the Hausa ethnic group, an expression of the Muslim north, is the new President-elect and he will assume his high functions on the 29h of May, 2015. Now, in the following period, we will wait and see whether there will be good news relating to the Chibok girls. Not only: the country might become like, for Ebola, Boko Haram free.
It is probable because in Nigeria the leading class isn’t capable only of bad. A lot of people are of the opinion that the girls of the Chibok pseudo-abduction aren’t in a state of segregation, neither are they sold as slaves, nor transformed to baby-wives of the members of the Boko Haram terrorist group, and least of all, eliminated, as the UNHRC Spokesperson, Raad Zeid, in Abuja, ill-auspiciously stated last week, although to immediately correct the declaration affirming instead, that with the incoming government, it is desirable the matter is resolved quite soon with the young girls back to their respective families. So, the Nigerian government must bring back our girls, now.
Buttressing the above desire and the thesis so far, is the statement issued on the 14h April 2015, on the occasion of the one year anniversary of the Chibok school-girls abduction, in Abuja, by the National Security Adviser, former Colonel Sambo Dasuki, who assured that “the Federal government is preparing to storm and liberate, before the 29th of May 2015, the presidential hand-over day, the Boko Haram fortress of the Sambisa forest, where the militants sill have one of their last remaining camps”. We understand, therefore, that the Chibok girls along with all abducted Nigerians shall be free and the Boko Haram terrorist matter shall also be a by-gone tale by the 29th of May 2015. Just as we, well and correctly, understood this Nigerian mass-abduction issue and the Boko Haram mayhem to be, right from the beginning. So let it happen that these two crucial questions are resolved, after all, the Nigerian federal government shan’t’ have but the selected figures to prosecute.
Blessing Akele
blessing.akele@yahoo.com
twitter @BlessingAkele
#BringBackOursGirls
Article translated to English with up-date (Dasuki’s statement). Original article in Italian, published on the 14h April 2015.