Playing politics with the missing girls

Emeka Ibemere

Obviously when the bus or trailer that packed the approximately 276 female students stopped at the gate of the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok on the night of 14–15 April 2014, in Borno State, to take the students hostage, the students knew quite well that they weren’t embarking on school excursion.

They knew that the end has come. They were last seen on the night of 14–15 when they rode on the bus apparently ‘donated’ by the Boko Haram sect and there was no farewell gesture of departing ones. Not even from their teachers who watched in terror, as the girls were moved away to only God knows where.

 Crammed inside the lorry that took them away to Sambisa forest, the enclave of the insurgent goons, the girls perhaps wept, and wailed  but there was no help and like that; off they go.

Four of the girls were alleged to have been later found not too far away from the scene of the incident, and they have kept mute to what transpired between their abductors and the rest of the girls.

Three weeks after that abduction, Nigerian security agencies embarked on an endless search to rescue the missing girls and as they grope in the dark searching the girls, protests, demonstrations and counter demonstrations are trailing the missing girls.

As protests are ongoing, and government helpless and clueless about the whereabouts of the students, politicians and opposition parties are using the missing saga to score cheap political goals even when concerned countries of the world are showing interest to rescue the little girls.

The kidnappings were claimed by Boko Haram, an Islamic Jihadist and Takfiri terrorist organization based in northeast Nigeria.

The insurgent goons, Boko Haram is opposed to what they distinguish as the "Westernization" of Nigeria, which they maintain is the root cause of criminal behaviour in the country.

Since 2010, Boko Haram has targeted schools, killing hundreds of students. A spokesperson for the group said such attacks would continue as long as the Nigerian government continued to interfere with traditional Islamic education. 10,000 children have been unable to attend school as a result of the activities by Boko Haram. Boko Haram has also been known to kidnap girls, who it believes should not be educated, and use them as cooks or sex slaves.

It was on this assumption, perhaps that on the night of 14–15 April 2014, a group of militants attacked the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Nigeria. They reportedly broke into the school, shooting the guards.

A large number of students were taken away in trucks, possibly into the Sambisa Forest. Houses in Chibok were also burnt down in the incident.  The school had been closed for four weeks prior to the attack due to the deteriorating security situation, but students from multiple schools had been called in to take final exams in physics.

The report said 530 students from multiple villages registered for the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, although it was unclear how many were in attendance at the time of the attack. The children were aged 16 to 18 and were in their final year of school. However, there was a twist in the categorical number that was initially reported.

Earlier reports said 85 students were kidnapped in the attack. But within the 19–20 April, the military released a statement that said more than 100 of 129 kidnapped girls had been freed. However, the statement was retracted, and on 21 April, parents said 234 girls were missing. Another report further claimed that a number of the students escaped the kidnappers in two groups. According to the police approximately 276 children were taken in the attack of which 53 had escaped as of 2 May. As that was not enough, there reports that the students were been subsequently forced into marriage with members of Boko Haram, with a reputed ‘bride price’ of ₦2,000 each and that many of the students were taken to the neighbouring countries of Chad and Cameroon, with sightings reported of the students crossing borders with the militants, and sightings of the students by villagers living in the Sambisa Forest. The forest is considered a refuge for Boko Haram. Residents of the area claimed that they have been able to track the movements of the students with the help of contacts across north eastern Nigeria.

Meanwhile, parents and other Nigerians took to social media to complain about the government's slow and poor response to the situation. Last week, several Non-Governmental Organizations took to the streets of Nigeria in protest, demanding more government action and release of the students.  

It was also reported that a particular woman who helped organize

protests was detained by the police, on the orders of the First Lady Patience Jonathan. It was gathered that First Lady was not happy when the women showed up for a meeting instead of the mother's of victims. The woman was later released.  Reports said Mrs. Jonathan had further incensed protestors by suggesting some abduction story was a hoax scripted by Boko Haram supporters to embarrass the government. Few days ago in far away America, protests were held in major Western cities including Los Angeles and London. At the same time, the hash tag #BringBackOurGirls trended globally on Twitter as the story continued to spread.

Prior to the protest, the police said it was still unclear the exact number of students who were kidnapped. They asked parents to provide documents, so that an official count could be made since school records were ‘damaged’ in the attack. President Goodluck Jonathan spoke publicly about the kidnapping for the first time, saying the government was doing everything it could to find the missing girls. At the same time, he blamed parents for not supplying enough information about their missing children to the police.

On 5 May, a video on which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnappings emerged. On the video, and claimed "God instructed me to sell them ...” he added, “I will carry out his instructions”. He said the girls should not have been in the school and instead have gotten married. It was unclear if the video was made before or after reports emerged that some of the victims had been sold.

Former Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, reacting on the incident on phone said the planned protest by Mrs President Jonathan to lead women demonstration to Governor Shettima in Maiduguri on Sunday was wrong. Tsav stated that the President wife’s comment betrayed her as woman who knows the meaning of power. The President wife had said she would lead a demonstration to Borno State if Chibok girls were not rescued from Boko Haram enclave. But the vocal ex-police boss said that statement of the First Lady was an attempt to divert attention of Nigerians and blackmail Governor Shettima.

“We rather expect her to lead demonstration against her husband who is the C-in-C with powers to engage the military. Governor Shettima is not the C-in-C and has no power to deploy troops. Besides, his state is placed under emergency rule”, Tsav added.

“Mrs Jonathan should blame her husband for inefficiency and insensitivity to insecurity situations in the country. When these girls were abducted, Jonathan went to Kano State to dance to ‘Kalangu’ music and engage governor Kwankwaso in needless insults. Mrs Jonathan is now mobilizing Nigerians against governor Shettima in an attempt to shield her husband from blame”.

According to Tsav, who described the First Lady as ‘The Empress’ said the First Lady has no power under any law to invite a state Commissioner of Police etc for security meeting.

“Police has become a puppet. She is confused. How can he issue orders to a Governor who is not the C-IN-C and whose state is under emergency rule to rescue the Chibok girls? Or has Goodluck Ebele Jonathan abdicated his responsibility as the C-in-C to Governor Shettima? It is now clear that Jonathan is being ill advised by her wife. It’s a great pity indeed”.  The former United States Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell declared that Boko Haram's strength "appears to be increasing. The government's ability to provide security to its citizens appears to be decreasing”. Director of the Atlantic Council's Africa Center J. Peter Pham said "The failure of the government to even get a clear count further reinforces a perception of systemic governmental failure".

Governor Kashim Shettima demanded to visit Chibok, despite being advised that it was too dangerous. The military was working with vigilantes and volunteers to search the forest near the Nigeria-Cameroon border on 21 April.

 The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNICEF have condemned the abduction. The leader of Boko Haram on Monday threatened to sell more than 200 schoolgirls his Islamist militant group kidnapped in north-eastern Nigeria last month.

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau says in a video, chuckling as he stands in front of an armoured personnel carrier with two masked militants wielding AK-47s on either side of him. "Allah has instructed me to sell them. They are his property and I will carry out his instructions," he says.

The United States is offering its help, but making clear that the Nigerian government must take the lead in finding more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Officials told CNN the Obama administration is sharing intelligence with Nigerian authorities and could provide other assistance, but there is no planning to send U.S. troops.

With a World Economic Forum gathering set to begin Wednesday in Abuja, the Nigerian government came under mounting pressure to save the girls abducted in the country's remote northeast and threatened with being sold into slavery.

On a trip to Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States "will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice." In Washington, U.S. officials offered few specific details on American help being provided.

"We are going to keep working with the Nigerians privately on that," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters. "Obviously they have come out very publicly and said that they are, you know, making every effort to find these girls. I just don't think we are going to outline how we are helping them. What we are focused on is making sure they can find (the girls) and bring them home to their families."

The apparent powerlessness of the military to prevent the attack or find the girls in three weeks has led to protests in the northeast and in Abuja and Lagos.

On Sunday, authorities arrested a leader of a protest staged last week in Abuja that had called on them to do more to find the girls, further fuelling outrage against the security forces.

Naomi Mutah Nyadar was picked up by police after a meeting she and other campaigners held with President Goodluck Jonathan's wife, Patience, concerning the girls.

Nyadar was taken to Asokoro police station, near the presidential villa, said fellow protester Lawan Abana, whose two nieces were among the abductees. She was released later and police said she had merely been invited in for an interview. A presidency source said Nyadar had been detained because she had falsely claimed to be the mother of one of the missing girls. Abana said she had made no such claim. In a statement, Patience Jonathan denied local media reports that she had ordered Nyadar's arrest but urged the protesters in Abuja to go home, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria said.

"You are playing games. Don't use school children and women for demonstrations again. Keep it to Borno, let it end there," the agency quoted her as saying.

Protests continued in Abuja on Monday and spread to Lagos, Nigeria's commercial hub in the southwest and geographically as far away from the region troubled by Boko Haram as possible. Lagosians normally express a degree of shoulder-shrugging apathy about the violence plaguing the north, but on Monday hundreds gathered outside the Lagos state secretariat to demand security forces do more to rescue the girls.

"This is the beginning. Until the girls are back, we will continue. I think this is the first step and we will mobilize more and more people," said Charlotte Obidairo of Youth Empowerment and Development Nigeria, a non-governmental organization.

In a televised media chat, President Jonathan pledged that the girls would soon be found and released, but admitted he had no clue where they were.

"Let me reassure the parents and guardians that we will get their daughters out," he said, adding extra troops had been deployed and aircraft mobilized in the hunt for the girls.

Britain and the United States have both offered to help track down the girls, but neither has given specifics.

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Youth Leader in Ebonyi State, Chinedu Ogah, has called for the immediate arrest and prosecution of the National Publicity Secretary of All Progressives Congress (APC), Lia Mohammed, over his comment against President Goodluck Jonathan since the incident.

He said the call for impeachment of the President and other inflammatory comments are capable of causing breakdown of law and order in the country.

Briefing journalists in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital, on Monday, Ogah stated that since Muhammed’s assumption of office as APC National Publicity Secretary, comments attributed to him against Jonathan are capable of generating clashes in the country, especially among supporters of the President and those of APC.

Ogah explained that the conducts of Mohammed show him as an agent of those plotting to upturn Nigeria, because they believe that power belongs to them alone, warning that nobody should consider any section of the country as second-rate to the other.

“It is regrettable, unfortunate and painful that the National Publicity Secretary of APC, who is expected to sell the manifesto of the party to the masses, resorted to insulting and embarrassing the office of Mr. President.

“We the members of the People’s Democratic Party decided to ignore his insults and embarrassment to the President, but he should not take our silence as weakness.

“Nigeria has a President that believes in the doctrine of peaceful co-existence of all individual irrespective of political affiliation,

“Mr. President is not a violent person unlike the past President, President Jonathan is determined to ensure that peace continues to exist in all parts of the country and would not resort to any act capable of igniting crisis in the country irrespective of the insults by the APC National Publicity Secretary”, he stated.

Ogah said the party and Jonathan are already aware of Mohammed’s antics and the calculated attempt to derail him (Jonathan) from his developmental agenda in the country, adding that effort to derail the President would be revisited by the humility of the President and his earnest desire not to allow himself to be derailed.

Ogah, who was reacting to the call by Mohammed for the National Assembly to commence impeachment moves against Jonathan, urged the security agencies in the country to arrest and prosecute the APC spokesperson.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has warned the federal government against going ahead with its reported plan to remove the elected Governor of Borno and appoint a military administrator to oversee the affairs of the state, under the guise of intensifying the fight against Boko Haram.

In a statement in Ibadan, Monday, by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the presidency should realize that there is always a limit to impunity, and that if indeed anyone should be removed over the protracted insurgency in the state and the entire North-east, it is President Goodluck Jonathan.

“What is happening in the North-east in general and Borno state in particular is failure of leadership at the highest level of government, especially because the imposition of a state of emergency in the three worst-hit states has given the President emergency powers to deal with the protracted crisis.

“As the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, President Jonathan is in full control of all the instruments of coercion available to the country, which he can and has been deploying at will. If, therefore, some seemingly implacable dead-enders have continued to kill, maim and destroy in any part of the country, no one but the President should be held liable. Everyone knows a Governor does not deploy troops.

”Also, it is trite to say that the raison d’être of any government is the protection of lives and property. This means that the moment any government fails in that key responsibility, it can no longer justify its reason for existence,” it said.

APC said Gov. Kashim Shettima and the entire people of Borno are the victims in the senseless war being waged by Boko Haram, and that what they deserve are succour and support, not further victimization by a federal government which seems to have run out of ideas on how to subdue the sect.

The party said no one should lend any credence to the denial, by the presidency, of the evil plot to remove Gov. Shettima, because this presidency’s words have never been worth the paper on which they are written.

“Several times in the past, this presidency has issued a straight-faced denial only to go ahead and do exactly what it said it won’t. Against such blatant lack of credibility and integrity, we do not believe the presidency’s denial,” it said.

APC said it is becoming increasingly clear that the presidency may be using the state of emergency in the North-east to fight its own political battle and get rid of those it perceives as a stumbling block to its interest in 2015.

The party said if that were not the case, the presidency would not be flying a satanic kite of planning to remove the Governor of Borno when it is clear that this Governor has done everything humanly possible to support the federal government and the brave men and women fighting the sect, in addition to providing succour to the good people of Borno who have been terribly traumatized by the activities of the misguided terrorists.

“The state of emergency has run its initial course and has even been renewed, yet the insurgency continues. That means the federal government must think out of the box to evolve new strategies to tackle the insurgency”.

One of such is to heighten intelligence gathering that will make it possible for our security forces to pre-empt attacks. Another is to win the hearts and minds of the local population so they can do more to help fish out the insurgents.