Sadly, the Chibok schoolgirls are still in Boko Haram’s captivity 150 days after they were abducted in dead of the night, while the nation remains in shock and despair. Yet, the government remains befuddled and does not know what to do to free the remaining 219 of them, with the escape of 57 others. Theirs is a most agonising experience that should lacerate every heart. Unfortunately, Nigerians are beginning to forget them, just as members of the political class have enthusiastically embraced the soapboxes, ready for 2015. The indignities these girls are passing through diminish us as a people. This rot must end now!
President Goodluck Jonathan’s initial slow response to the kidnapping was a grievous mistake. Now, the maidens may have been dispersed to make their rescue difficult. A Wall Street Journal report, last month, said the United States surveillance flights over north eastern Nigeria, in July, spotted about 70 girls held in an open field, and another 40 in August in a different location. But “when surveillance flights returned, both sets of girls had been moved,” said the report.
Similarly, Steven Davis, an Australian clergyman, and rumoured negotiator for the girls’ release, had told Daily Mail of London, in June, “The vast majority of the Chibok girls are not being held in Nigeria. They are in camps across the Nigeria border in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.” The hope of their parents is turning to despair as the waiting game continues. The US Assistant Secretary of State, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, hit the nail on the head when she reminded the authorities and Nigerians last week that the worsening terror climate was a “…sober reality check for all of us. We are past time for denial and pride.”
Having ruled out the rescue operation because of safety concerns, rejected the Boko Haram leader’s prisoners’ swap deal offer, the Federal Government ought to have found a way to engage the insurgents towards freeing their captives. Ironically, none is on the cards. Time is running out.
Curiously, former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s gesture on this score could not be exploited; just the same way mediatory offers from a Nigerian journalist, Ahmed Salkida, purportedly linked to the insurgents, and a female lawyer, Aisha Wakil, were jettisoned. Putting in context the harm official indecision might have wreaked, Obasanjo noted recently that some of the girls may never return. Whatever the authorities need to do must be carried out with a sense of urgency.
Our President has frenetically attended several security summits in France, London and Kenya since April 14 when the girls were kidnapped. Belatedly, he held talks with President Idriss Deby of Chad on Monday in Ndjamena on how to arrest the insurgency. The release of the girls should be primary quotient in the whole arrangement. Indeed, the authorities should be held to account on these girls as the protection of lives and property defines the legitimacy of any government.
Since 2009, the bestial group has killed more than 15,000 persons that include hundreds of students; destroyed schools; displaced over 1.5 million people; just as it has declared Gwoza in Borno State the seat of its dream Caliphate. Other towns such as Damboa, Bama and swathes of territory in Yobe and Adamawa states are under its control. These are signs that the Nigerian state is in for a long battle with these Islamic extremists that have unmistakably been adding layers of horror to their monstrous evil. Twice recently, they chased hundreds of Nigerian soldiers into Cameroon.
Apparently, to turn the tide against the Islamists will not be easy as realities suggest. International effort is critical at this point, which, regrettably, has waned after the initial effusion of support that trailed the girls’ disappearance and in the face of a sullen Nigerian government. Boko Haram’s intermittent cross-border incursions into Cameroon, which culminated in the July 27 kidnapping of the wife of that country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ahmadou Ali, indicate strongly that it is not only a Nigerian nightmare, but an international security challenge.
But Jonathan is standing on ceremony while our 219 girls languish in the captivity of the black-flag-waving terrorists. The tragic reality is that it is becoming apparent by the day that the government is now helpless, some would add clueless. At least, in 2013, there was a prisoner-swap of women and children with the sect.
Expediency now dictates that the swap deal option the government earlier scoffed at be re-examined. Obviously, this is not the best. The US, much against its state policy, has many times been caught in this labyrinth. Recently, it swapped five men held at Guantanamo Bay for Bowe Bergdahl, a US Army Sergeant held captive since 2009 by Talibans. Israel has also executed some compromise prisoner-swap deals with the Palestinians.
If positive change is to emerge, President Jonathan must now demonstrate hands-on commitment to his duty as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He alone will ultimately be held responsible for whatever turns out to be the fate of these school girls. Nigeria needs to collaborate with its immediate neighbours and friendly countries to end the ordeals of these innocent girls in the hands of rabid Islamists.
Boko Haram is a component of the global al-Qaeda and is capable of jolting the sub-region, just as one of its peers – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – has been able to rattle the Middle East, the US and Europe. A concerted global action against the group in Nigeria makes sense now, before it is too late.
