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It was six years last Monday when Boko Haram terrorists seized 276 girls who were about to write their school certificate examinations at the Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. That was when the spry story of the kidnapped girls began. President Muhammadu Buhari marked the day saying in Abuja that the remaining 112 girls still in captivity would not be forgotten. It was an understatement. Nigerians will never forget the girls, and as long as they are not returned their kidnapping would remain a sore that would never heal.
At stake is our injured pride as a people. The Trojans of old fought for many years over a lone girl. But more than that, their continued captivity is a testimony to the broken promises of two Nigerian governments. The girls were taken during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. It claimed being surprised. A probe was promised Nigerians to find out why the girls were left unguarded in a territory that was no more secure than a ‘no man’s land’ in a war theatre. Former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, conducted a few colourful fact-finding interviews including the school principal who practically set an examination centre in a war theatre. The terrorists actually came to raid the town to steal food and were at first perplexed to find the girls or what to do with them.
The Australian cardinal who tried to negotiate the freedom of the girls on behalf of the desperate Jonathan administration praised Jonathan but was frustrated a few times and he gave up and left the country and warned against an armed rescue of the girls.
The Chibok girls were one year in captivity when they became the front and centre of the 2015 presidential campaign with candidate Muhammadu Buhari promising to get them released unharmed in his first week in office, and to rout Boko Haram in three months. Indeed, Jonathan lost the election partly due to his depiction worldwide as a feckless commander-in-chief asleep at the wheels. The Buhari administration spent all of 2015 with nothing to show the parents of the Chibok girls. In December, however, the President announced in a famous BBC interview that the sect had been technically defeated.
Yet no word about the captives until August 2016 when 21 of the girls were freed. Nine months later, 82 more of the school girls were released making a total of 103 released through the Buhari administration. Details of the agreement are unknown; two million Euros was mentioned plus the release of a cadre of Boko Haram commanders. Nothing was said of the rest of the girls. The total count of the girls taken was 276. Fifty-seven escaped on the night of the raid, one girl was found close to the Sambisa forest with her baby apparently trying to escape. Three more were found by soldiers at different times and places around the war theatre and rescued. On the whole, therefore, 112 were unaccounted for.
Questions have been raised about the skill of government negotiators. How did Boko Haram explain the absence of the 112 Chibok girls; in like manner, how was it that in the more successful Dapchi deal on February 18, 2018, the negotiators accepted the release of all the girls less one, Lear Sharibu, of the girls kidnapped from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State. Why would a negotiator accept a deal like that?
But the outcomes of the negotiations are a reflection of the bargaining strengths of the parties. In an atmosphere of war, they reflect the reality in the battle field. The Federal Government was in each case at a disadvantage, seeming to want the deal more than Boko Haram. And since December 2015 when Buhari announced the “technical defeat” of Boko Haram, the sect seems to have grown from strength to strength, even after its internal problems leading to the bifurcation of the terrorist group, with one faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, claiming to collaborate with the Islamic State of Syria and the Levante.
President Buhari’s promise to free the rest of the girls sounds now like an annual event. Some parents who live the nightmare of their daughters captivity are now cynical about such promises. Enoch Mark whose two daughters are still missing was quoted recently saying that the “government are not talking about our girls anymore.” He is alive, 11 other parents have since been killed by the terrorists and eight other parents have died from post-traumatic stress disorders. Nor has Boko Haram ended abductions. As late as December 2019, the terrorists kidnapped 22 people in Chibok in the Kibaki area said Dauda Iliya, head of the area development association.
It has taken the recent routing of Boko Haram by Chadian forces to demonstrate that Boko Haram is a paper tiger to a determined force. The Federal Government should honour its promises to the parents of the girls and Nigerians in general. As Oby Ezekwesili once said, the parents are no more troubled about the state or status of their daughters. They just want their daughters back.
