This is the pre-occupation of this opinion, with specific direction to the over 219 girls abducted from the Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State last year.
Naij.com Journalist and Opinion Writer, Oshii Bretch-Frankly, shared some very specific views on the matter in his article below:
Documentarists have noted that we are gradually drifting to the first anniversary since those innocent queens were snatched from the schools by men of the Boko Haram insurgency. As we near the one year anniversary since their disappearance, it has become all-too apparent that these girls may have been gone and probably forgotten.
But who has banished the memory of the girls to the mountainous heap of our national catastrophic history? Well, the answer is this: those who are constitutionally charged with the duty of safe-guarding our lives and property. In this regard, the president and commander-in-chief takes the greatest responsibility. Agreed security is everyone’s concern, especially in the face of a rampaging insurgence. But who controls that forces that should guarantee our freedom? You know where the answer lies.
As this point, it is no longer news that that responsibility has been shirked. What is galling is the fact that the people concerned are carrying on as if nothing happened, as if the nation is experiencing the best of times. Last month or so, the president made a surprise visit to Maiduguri to visit victims Boko Haram attacks. He was billed to be there shortly after for campaigns. Nigerians have long forgiven him for not deeming it fit to visit the place when these girls were reported missing. His reported denial of any ‘missing’ is well-documented. So, we may not blame him, since he does not feel the pain and anguish of those poor souls whose children and wards have been in the hands of that blood-sucking and carnage-wreaking group called Boko Haram.
It is believed in many quarters that it took President Goodluck Jonathan more than nine days to believe that Boko Haram had breached the territory he is presiding over to cart any some innocent school girls. And when the Pakistani girl-child rights campaigner came calling at the State House in Abuja, President Jonathan shoved and shoved, made promises, barked like an underfed dog. And that was where it ended – motion-in- stasis.
Months later, his chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh was on air to tell Nigerians that the girls had been found. He lied that based on iron-cast intelligence, he and his colleagues were exploring the best intelligence methods to retrieve these children. As it turned out, and with many other things associated with this administration, it was a hoax. No girls were found, no move was made, the girls remain in captivity.
To cut that narrative short, Nigerians expected the president to tell them how he intends to return the Chibok girls to their beleaguered parents. But it appears ,even the platform provided by the electioneering campaign was not good enough for Dr. Jonathan to mention these girls. From Lagos to Calabar, from Sokoto to Bayelsa, the president spoke glowingly and some say, reactively, about how he intends build Nigeria to greater heights. But it appears those girls were not part of the Nigeria of his plans. He consistently refused to mention them. Was he overwhelmed by the fanfare that accompanied his lucidly ludicrous campaign stopovers? It is unlikely so.
The answer is perhaps, that the President has lost count of the places entrusted to him to govern. He is probably unaware that those Chibok girls are as important to Nigeria as the girls in his own household. He is obstinately oblivious of the fact that those girls constitute a greater proportion of the promise he made to Nigeria in 2011 and which he has failed to honour. If the president was not reminded by his team of advisers, couldn’t he have mentioned these girls as his way of say, ‘gone but not forgotten’?
The silence has surely taken out some steam from his campaign and etched the opposition some steps to the presidency, at least as far as I am concerned. Someone should please help nudge the president to #Bringbackourgirls or leave us alone.
On the night of April 14, 2014 more than 200 school girls were abducted inside their school hostel in Chibok, Borno State. The schoolgirls were asleep at their boarding school in Chibok when they were woken by the noise of movement in the school. A group of armed men, posing as soldiers, told the students to go outside into waiting trucks, so they could be “rescued.”
The Nigerian authorities had been harshly criticized over slow response to this tragic occurrence. Both national and global attempts to rescue the girls have pleaded unsuccessful at this time.
Recently the youngest Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai February 8 called for global support regarding the rescue of the still missing 200 Chibok school girls.
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