President Goodluck Jonathan’s alleged cash gift to parents and colleagues of the 219 schoolgirls taken into captivity three months ago by Boko Haram Islamists and the controversy the gesture has generated typify all that is wrong with the government’s handling of the unfortunate incident so far.
It is sad that, at a time when efforts should be geared towards bringing back the girls, the parents are now bickering over a pittance. Rather than give them succour, the trip to the Presidency has put the grieving community of Chibok in the news for all the wrong reasons. It has compounded their trauma and deepened their anguish.
After spending the better part of three months evading a visit to Chibok, which should have been the right thing to do, the President finally found a way round the matter by corralling the missing girls’ parents and the 51 that escaped from captivity into a meeting at the State House in Abuja. At the end of the meeting, on the 99 th day of captivity, it was alleged that money was doled out to those in attendance. This has made some of the parents who did not make the trip to Abuja to cry foul.
The first inkling that money changed hands during the visit was when accusations emerged that leaders of the Chibok community who facilitated the visit to the Presidency made a fortune out of their misfortune by collecting N100 million and giving them peanuts. One of the parents, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, reportedly said, “I received N100,000; some got N300,000 and some got nothing at all. Somebody told me they (the Presidency) gave about N100 million.” Another who corroborated the first speaker’s claim added, “Those of us in the village (who did not make the trip to Abuja) were given N7,000. This is not a thing of joy. What we want is for our girls to be brought back home.”
If the purpose of doling out cash was to take the parents’ minds away from the main issue of rescuing their missing girls, it almost succeeded, as the concern thereafter centred more on how much was actually released by the Presidency and how supposed beneficiaries were short-changed. Both the chairman of the Kibaku Area Development Association of Abuja, Bitrus Pogu, and his Chibok Community counterpart, Tsambido Abana, denied collecting money on behalf of the visiting Chibok parents and girls.
Unfortunately, Rueben Abati, the presidential spokesman, who should have cleared the air on how much money was released, for what purpose and the formula for disbursement, further complicated issues when he denied outright that money changed hands. He went further to put the onus of proof on those making the allegation, claiming, “The allegation is completely wild. What they are claiming is completely unknown to the President. Whoever is claiming it should prove it because no such thing happened.”
But from the various reports on the issue, it is obvious that money was given out, except that the actual amount is still a subject of conjecture. The spokesman for KADA, Dauda Iliya, insisted that N22.4 million was shared directly by a Senior Special Assistant to the President on Special Duties, whose name was not given. There is no doubt that this is a big mess that is perhaps designed to obfuscate the real issue at stake.
Right from that fateful day, April 14, 2014, when the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, was invaded by Boko Haram, with the storehouses looted, the school buildings razed to the ground and the girls, then sitting for their final school certificate examination, carried away by the terrorists, it has been one wrong move after the other. For instance, given the circumstance in which the 51 girls were able to make good their escape, it is obvious that if rescue efforts had been mounted immediately after the girls were taken away, many more, if not all, would by now have been reunited with their parents. The example of Cameroon where the security forces reacted promptly to rescue the wife of the country’s deputy prime minister from Boko Haram captivity attests to this.
Then came the absurdity of bringing the parents to Abuja to see the President when the visit should have been the other way round. It is even more absurd that it took the visit of a 17-year-old female education campaigner from Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai, to stir the President’s interest in meeting with the parents. It may be difficult to admit it, but the truth is that the country has failed these girls. That they are still in captivity close to four months after they were taken only magnifies the extent of the failure.
The government may have naively meant well with the cash gift, but such a sensitive matter ought to have been handled transparently. If done in the open, the whole controversy about the amount involved and how some people were allegedly short-changed would have been avoided.
Nevertheless, there are still many ways through which the government can bring relief to the Chibok community. One of such ways is to rebuild the school that was burnt down by the mass murderers, while plans should be stepped up to help the 51 girls already out of captivity to return to school.
Efforts should also be made to properly secure the Chibok community, which has become the target of frequent Boko Haram invasion in recent months. And, above all, the government must bring the girls back as soon as possible.
