BY Taiwo George
It’s been two years, 731 days, and 17,520 hours since 276 female students were abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok in Borno state.
While 57 managed to escape, 217 have remained in captivity since that dark night. If only one could turn back the hands of the clock, the Chibok saga will never be part of our history.
It’s horrifying to realise that the still-missing girls have been in the wretched hands of Boko Haram ever since. They have known horrors that no child should be acquainted with. They have known no love and affection, but absolute hatred.
Their absence is deeply felt, not just in their homes but across the world. Here are eight things that have happened since their abduction.
Starting with the hilarious. When the girls were kidnapped, the government of President Goodluck Jonathan did not believe it. The inside story was that it was the opposition that orchestrated it to embarrass him ahead of the 2015 presidential election.
With this at the background, his wife, Patience, invited the principal of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, the first lady of Borno state, and education ministry officials to Aso Rock “for discussion”. Then she delivered a series of lines that became national anthems in a matter of weeks.
In what looked like drama, she lambasted officials of the Borno state government and the school principal, and suggested that nobody was kidnapped. Then she shed crocodile tears for the cameras, wailing: “There is God o. All this blood that you are sharing in Borno… remember there is God in everything we are doing.”
She famously asked the school’s principal: “Na only you waka come?” – apparently expecting more people from Borno. The Borno first lady stayed away.
The world stands in unity in the demand of the release of the innocent school children. The campaign for their freedom have ricocheted the four corners of the earth.
From President Barack Obama of the United States, and Michelle, his wife, to Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom to Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, to Malala Yousafzai, child rights campaigner, to the #BringBackOurGirls movement in Nigeria, the message has been the same: Chibok girls must be reunited with their families.
Different strokes for different folks goes a popular saying. As the girls in the enclave of the insurgent bemoan their fate, their colleagues who escaped have been transformed in one way or the other. At least four of them are now studying in the US, while some are enjoying scholarship at the prestigious American University of Nigeria in Yola, Adamawa state.
A good number of them have met ministers, governors, visited where they ordinarily wouldn’t have been, at least not when they did.
The only thing constant in life is change, and Nigeria witnessed this during the absence of the missing girls. Those who were in the opposition when the Boko Haram sect seized the maidens have now formed government at the center.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan made history as the first incumbent Nigerian leader to accept defear and congratulate his opponent, even before the final result of the election was announced.
Two months after the new government came on board, the #BringBackOurGirls movement visited the presidential villa with the parents of the Chibok girls to find out what the government will do differently in securing the girls’ freedom.
Unlike their previous attempts, the visit was welcoming. The government of the day sent vehicles to ferry the campaigners and the parents of the girls to the villa, where they held a meeting with the nation’s number-one citizen.
However, six months later when they returned to Aso Rock, the atmosphere had changed. It took serious pressure before they could be allowed to see the president, who had earlier sent one of his ministers to receive them.
At the meeting, which journalists were ordered out of, the jokes, banters and smiles were missing. A whole lot had changed.
Graca Machel, widow of Nelson Mandela, South Africa apartheid hero, visited the country in solidarity with parents of the girls.
At that meeting which held in Lagos in November, the affected parents poured out their hearts, while Machel, who goes into history as the only woman to have been the first lady of two different countries – she was also married to Samora Machel, former president of Mozambique – assured them that the world had not forgotten them.
“I shook hands with you and I felt your pains; I know how you feel, we all have blood flowing in us. I have heard your cries and I will not forget. I feel your pains and I will never forget,” she told the grieving parents.
“You have asked me to speak to the government; you have asked me to tell the world about your plight … I want you to know that despite the fact that we have not been able to bring the girls back, the world has not forgotten you. I won’t be honest if I say I will bring back the girls but we are hopeful.”
Her words were truly inspiring as seen in the countenance of the parents.
In what was described as the biggest arrest in the fight against insurgency, the Department of State Services (DSS) arrested Khalid Albarnawi, who is regarded in counter-terrorism circles to be “as important as Abubakar Shekau”.
Albarnawi is known to be the most influential member of Nigeria’s terror network with contacts to other Jihadi groups in north Africa and the middle east.
He was nabbed in Lokoja, Kogi state, on April 1.
Kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls is such as an unusual story – so is the rise to fame of a bread hawker.
As at the time the kidnap, Olajumoke Orisaguna was known to only a few people in Ire, a town in Osun state, but today, a Google search will show that the street hawker turned model has become popular even beyond the shores of Nigeria. Just like Chibok.
Jumoke never had the opportunity of seeking knowledge at the level of the missing girls, but fortune smiled on her when she strolled into a photo session that changed her story forever.
As tears flow freely for the girls on the second anniversary of their abduction, one can only hope that their stories change quite soon. Until then, their thoughts will keep haunting us.
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