Wither The Chibok Girls …639 Days Still In Captivity

Buhari and Lai Mohammed

By Monday, December 28, 2015, the 219 Chibok schoolgirls abducted from their school in Chibok, Borno State had spent 632 days in captivity. In all, they were 276 but 57 of them were said to have escaped, leaving 219 whose whereabout still remains unknown.
Strangely, public agitation for the return of the girls seems to have abated to such extents that it is safe to say, the girls may have been forgotten. It should not be so, because as a Rwandan diplomat was once quoted as asking: “Can a country give- up her girls? In Rwanda, children are a ‘pearl’, when you lose it you search for it until you find, even if it is under your dead body. A girl is the ‘‘future of humanity.”
Writing in the Guardian of Wednesday, December 9, 2015, an activist, Dolapo Aina lamented “600 days later, one year plus 235 days, 276 Chibok girls abducted, 57 escaped, 219 still missing, not rescued. Not a good scorecard for the Buhari- led administration.”
Some may consider Aina’s seeming indictment of Buhari’s government a little too harsh but a leader must be judged by his own words, promises and indeed avowments. Rescuing the Chibok girls in a timely fashion was one of Buhari’s promises to the nation of which many Nigerians preferred him to his opponent, then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.
In campaign after campaign, the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ campaigners led by a former minister under the Obasanjo Presidency, threw invectives at the administration of the day for ‘doing nothing’ to bring back the girls. Rescuing the ‘Chibok girls’ thus became one of the defining issues of the 2015 Presidential elections, with virtually all odds favouring Buhari.
Even so, not many believed that the ‘Bring Back Our Girls,’ activists were an appendage of the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and that the group was indeed being funded by the party. In fact, the group garnered so much public sympathy that eventually turned into the open demonisation of President Jonathan.
On its part, the APC described Jonathan as an incompetent Commander-in-Chief who knew little or nothing about warfare and so could not be depended upon to rescue the Chibok girls. To them, hoping that the Jonathan administration could rescue the girls was a tall order which could never come to fruition.
As it stands today, they are right. This is because 412 days passed under that government’s watch without bringing back the girls. In fact, despite the repeated assurances that efforts were being made to rescue the girls, apart from the 57 that escaped, not a girl was rescued.
To make the needed difference,  Buhari’s APC promised that it would not only wipe our Boko Haram within days but that it would bring back the girls alive. Upon assumption of office, the party might have forgotten the number of Nigerians who voted for it, for that singular promise.
Thousands of young people, mothers and indeed parents and guardians built their hopes around the Buhari Presidency, in hope that the girls would be rescued.
That hope was strengthened by the repeated assurances by the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ campaigners that only a change of government could make the rescue of the girls possible. Even when it was revealed that the supposed child right activists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Human Rights Crusaders’ were indeed politicians, and their campaigns politically driven, many Nigerians stuck to their belief in change to make the difference.
Added to that was the military pedigree of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, who as former Head of State, was once a Commander-in-Chief. It was the belief that as a trained soldier, blessed with superior intelligence, more robust charisma and strength of character, he was more likely to evoke in Nigerian troops extra loyalty necessary to identify the location of the girls and indeed rescue them, within days.
Upon assumption of office, the Commander-in-Chief kept the people’s hope alive when he assured that the girls would be brought back unhurt. Infact, presidency sources hinted that the administration had identified where the children were being held but that troops were being careful not to endanger their lives through an ill-planned rescue attempt.
Administration officials even went a step further to assure that they were willing to negotiate with Boko Haram insurgents for the release of the girls, implying that something was being done. Many Nigerians went agog in praise, highlighting the marked differences, between the Jonathan Presidency and that of the Buhari administration with the required military credential.
But as the days drag on to weeks and weeks to months, the campaigns are waning. Some of the campaigners, left out in consideration for juicy federal jobs are counting their losses, apparently regretting being too forward.
It is exactly 218 days under Buhari’s watch. None can still tell where the girls are. If they are dead or alive. If they have been turned into killer machines to threaten society as suicide bombers. If they are indeed in the country or not.
Government officials have repeatedly dismissed the suggestion that some of them might have been so radicalised, they could be danger to society. And have repeatedly promised that the girls would soon be home, hale and hearty, because the needful was being done.
But that was months ago. Two hundred and eleven days today, not yet a word from the Commander-in-Chief about the fate of the Chibok girls. It seems the incompetence, the APC accused the Jonathan Presidency of, has been inherited in good measure by the Buhari government, even with all the military background and combat expertise.
It seems they are beginning to understand that hostage rescue is indeed a different aspect of military warfare that requires tact, high intelligence, military precision, combat alertness and indeed superior fire power.
They must have come to the realisation that those are not issues that should ever be politicised, because politics, campaigns of calumny and indeed vilification of opponents on these scores are indeed vain attempt at righting wrongs.
The distractions which politicisation of those issues, caused the Jonathan government were huge, destructive and counter-productive. And for a President seeking re-election, they were indeed disastrous, divisive and injurious.
They also culminated in the eventual fall of that administration. This is why many are worried that even without that kind of politics being played with the issues, as was with the past government, not a meaningful success has been recorded on that score. The children are still missing. Their whereabouts still unknown. Their current strength unknown, the state of their health unknown, when they would be rescued, totally unknown. And it is 218 days under Buhari’s watch.
While the troops deserve the full commendation of Nigerians for battling Boko Haram insurgents to a standstill, like Dolapo Aina lamented, it’s “not a good scorecard for the Buhari-led administration,” that the Chibok girls have still not been rescued, with all the assurances during the pre-election campaigns.
My Agony is that the lot that championed, the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ campaign, the now ruling APC government, with promises to rescue the girls, once in power, seems bereft of positive ideas necessary to discharge itself from the accused box of failure. As was in the past.
That is why Abraham Lincoln once warned, “we must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.”

Soye Wilson Jamabo