Chibok Girls: Between Jonathan’s Jests & Buhari Banters

By Emmanuel Aziken 

There are indeed few incidents that have defined the relationship between Nigerian leaders and the citizenry as the Chibok Girls affair that happened on us six years ago.

The kidnap of 276 girls from their school by the brutish jihadists was provoking enough to have stirred the passions of many world figures, including Mrs. Michelle Obama.

She was at that time the First Lady of the United States and gave the weight of her office to the campaign to free the girls.

The kidnap ironically presented an opportunity for Nigeria to tap the goodwill of world leaders to not only free the girls but to advance the cause for gender issues.

However, from top to bottom, nearly all Nigerians made a mockery of the Chibok Girls issue.

The Nigerian First Lady at the time, Dame Patience Jonathan turned into the choirmaster of those in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP who read politics into the kidnap.

The bad grammar in her rebuff of the kidnap, on the other hand turned into a caricature for others who mocked her. Meanwhile, in mocking the First Lady’s faulty language, almost everyone forgot the girls who were the real victims of the episode.

So, the girls languished in the captivity of the depraved marauders, seemingly abandoned to their fate.

It was into this gap that some conscientious Nigerian activists stepped into to forge a national consensus towards freeing the girls.

Among them were former minister of education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, a social activist Hajiya Aisha Yesufu and the daughter of one of Northern Nigeria’s most revered ideologues, Ms. Hadiza Bala Usman.

Ms. Usman remarkably, was about the same time also a secretarial assistant in the unfolding Presidential Campaign Committee, PCC of the Muhammadu Buhari Campaign.

It is possible that her presence in the frontline of the Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG advocacy that provoked the Jonathan crowd to read politics in their move.

Major-General Buhari was also not indifferent and showed concern towards the campaign for the release of the girls.

But the majority of Nigerians, however, were indifferent. Many were pitiably stuck in the satire of the First Lady’s faltering language.

Pitiably, time quickly passed and the issue became an albatross for President Goodluck Jonathan. How could he have the temerity to ask the parents of the kidnapped girls for their votes when he could not defend their daughters?

Buhari, the general who his handlers reminded the nation of having as GOC in Jos advanced his troops into Chad to teach their soldiers a lesson, became the cynosure of hope for many advocates.

That hope, however, disappeared not long after the new president settled in in 2015. That hope vanished as the new president’s minders turned the arms they could have used to fight the insurgents to brutalise the BBOG advocates.

Ms. Bala Usman meanwhile had gone below the radar in the advocacy following her appointment as managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA.

One of the puzzling actions taken by the Buhari administration was the declaration in December 2015 of victory over the insurgency.

Administration officials in celebration of the ‘victory’ declared that the Boko Haram insurgents did not occupy a foot of Nigerian territory.

That declaration and the sustenance of the claim has puzzled and continues to puzzle many otherwise clear-minded Nigerians.

If Boko Haram does not hold a space of Nigerian territory, then to which neighbouring country were the Chibok Girls taken to?

The lie in that assertion was consistently brought to light by the unrelenting attacks of Nigerians in the Northeast by the insurgents.

In February 2018 Boko Haram also repeated another kidnap of schoolgirls with the removal of 110schoolgirls from Daapchi in Yobe State. The girls who survived the attack were all returned with the exception of the only Christian, Leah Sharibu, among them. Ms. Sharibu refused to denounce her faith for freedom.

Buhari, unlike Jonathan, was quick to negotiate and bring back the Dapchi girls except for Ms. Sharibu.

He had earlier succeeded in bringing back 82 of the captured Chibok Girls in 2016.

The failure to bring back Sharibu and the remaining Chibok girls after five years in office, however, limits whatever plaudits Buhari should have earned.

On the sixth anniversary of the Chibok Girls kidnap last Tuesday, President Buhari again promised to do his best to see to the release of the remaining captives.

But for many, the proclamation has become a ritual as buttressed by the assertion of his spokesmen in a news report last February in Daily Trust.

Asked by the newspaper to react to reports of the sighting of a Chibok Girl at that time, Chief Femi Adesina quipped, “the anniversary is in April. Why are you asking me in February? I don’t see what has brought it up now.”

That response in February exactly conveyed the mindset of the administration officials; Our Chibok Girls have become an anniversary issue to be celebrated in good or bad only in April. The matter of their release is apparently not an issue.

Indeed, between Jonathan’s jestings and Buhari’s banters, our Chibok Girls are not the better for it. It is no surprise that world figures like Mrs. Obama left us to our fate!

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