Today is the 11th anniversary of the embarrassing Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. The girls and their parents will never forget that misbegotten night of April 14, 2014. Does the government know or care?
The Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, had been shut for four weeks due to poor security conditions but was reopened to allow final-year students to sit their certificate exams. In the dead of night, Boko Haram men in military uniform stormed the school and stole 276 girls. The teenage girls mistook them for soldiers.
It was the most audacious operation the Islamist terror group had launched in Nigeria. Reports stated that they arrived in a convoy of vehicles, into which they herded their young victims. It was a most harrowing experience for the teens. Some jumped out of the trucks. The rest ended up where their captors wanted: the forbidding Sambisa Forest.
The world was horrified, but the Nigerian government would hardly be bothered. About 24 hours after the incident, then-President Goodluck Jonathan flew to Kano to receive Ibrahim Shekarau, a former governor of the state, who defected to the ruling PDP. There, he sang and danced happily at a political rally. He lived in denial for a whole month and did not speak publicly about the attack until May 4. This is unfortunate.
Canada, China, France, Britain, and the United States expressed their sympathies and offered to help. France promised to send troops. China offered to deploy its satellite surveillance technology. The British Royal Air Force said it sighted the girls a few weeks after their kidnapping and offered to rescue them.
The Americans, using their “eye in the sky” technology, reported seeing a group of about 80 of the Chibok girls. They, too, said they would assist. But the Jonathan administration declined, saying it was a national issue that would be tackled internally.
As the government prevaricated, Abubakar Shekau, then leader of the murderous group, released a video of some 130 of the kidnapped girls in hijab and boasted about the chilling things he and his gang could do with them. He said his religion allowed him to capture infidels and use them as slaves. It was a frightening hint of what the kidnapped girls were going through.
Many were forcibly converted to Islam. Some were married against their will or kept in sexual slavery. Some who resisted went through hell. A good number escaped, even walking for weeks in the bushes.
Some were found wandering with their babies; some were rescued by the military. Those caught trying to escape were severely beaten. In 2016, two of the girls were found violently raped, half-dead, and tied to a tree. Some were radicalised and turned into suicide bombers.
The government failed them on that woeful night of April 14, 2014. Some locals reportedly informed the military of the terrorists’ convoy moving towards Chibok. But no action was taken.
Over 90 of the girls are still missing. Where are they? What are their captors doing with them? The government fails them still, 11 years later.
Muhammadu Buhari, who campaigned on Jonathan’s weaknesses and failure to prevent the Chibok kidnapping or rescue the girls, also failed to secure their release.
On February 19, 2018, over two years into his first term, Boko Haram kidnapped 110 girls from the Government Science and Technical College, Dapchi, in neighbouring Yobe State. About a month later, 101 of the girls were brought back.
Some of those not returned are believed to be killed. One of them, Leah Sharibu, 15 at the time, is still held by the terrorists because she refused to renounce her Christian faith. Till the end of Buhari’s eight-year term, Boko Haram could not be tamed, though he and his aides kept saying the group had been technically degraded.
In 2015, Amnesty International estimated that some 2,000 women and girls had been abducted by Boko Haram since 2014.
Between 2014 and now, the Islamists and bandits have attacked schools in the North, with serious breaches in Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara, and Katsina States.
This is a blight on the government and the security agencies, including the self-styled Department of State Services. The government has failed in its core responsibility to secure the citizens. As long as one citizen is in captivity, so long is the country in captivity.
Nearly two years into his administration, President Bola Tinubu has yet to utter a word about the missing girls and others still held by Boko Haram.
Vice-President Kashim Shettima, who was Borno State governor when the Chibok girls were abducted, rarely talks about it.
But their kidnapping was no fault of theirs and could have happened to anybody. Why abandon them? Is the Tinubu administration wishing the tragedy away?
Even more heartrending is the official narrative that things are getting better in the security sector. This is untrue. There seems to be an unwritten law in Aso Rock that keeps denying the obvious. Nigeria is sixth on the Global Terrorism Index. That is a dangerous rating. The government must stop living in denial.
Hundreds of schools have been shut down in the North due to terror attacks. More than 1,600 children have been kidnapped across the region since 2014, according to Save the Children.
This has kept tens of thousands of children from attending school. This has contributed to about 20.1 million children out of school in Nigeria, per the UN. This portends danger to the entire country. It should be reversed.
The government should ramp up efforts to bring back the remaining Chibok girls and others still held by Islamist terror groups.
Nigerians and parents of the missing girls, including Sharibu, ought to know where their children are. It is insensitive for government officials to be globetrotting and carrying on as though the country’s security challenges are over.
The fact that over 90 kidnapped Chibok girls and others are yet to return highlights a lack of political will to contain the Islamists and bandits. The Tinubu administration should make history and win this war. State police, vigilantes, and top-notch intelligence will help.
In 2015, there was a $30 million international effort tagged the Safe Schools Initiative to rebuild hundreds of schools in the North. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Nigeria’s finance minister (now Director-General of the World Trade Organisation), flew into GGSC, Chibok, in a helicopter to lay the foundation block.
Years later, the rebuilding plan did not make much progress. The school is still in disrepair, the locals say. Other schools are in similar conditions and are also closed.
This plays into the agenda of murderous groups like Boko Haram, which are opposed to education. The schools should be rebuilt, and children encouraged to return.
It is disturbing that the government has ignored the missing Chibok girls and the Leah Sharibus.
Nigeria must quit living in denial of the obvious terrorists’ atrocities. Tinubu should declare a state of emergency on insecurity. The government must be intentional about seeking solutions to the menace, including gleaning from such countries as Colombia, where diehard militants also kidnapped large numbers of innocent citizens.
This year, the defence gulped N6.7 trillion. It must be used to secure the people.
