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It is sad that 1,415 days after Boko Haram elements stormed the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, and left Nigerians gnashing their teeth over the kidnap of over 200 schoolgirls (with over a hundred of them still in captivity till this day), the country has to go through the motions of another weeping and moaning period for yet another set of 110 girls kidnapped at the Government Girls Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State, on February 19.
As with the case of the Chibok girls, the thought of the young and innocent girls in the hands of the violent sect can kill even the most lion-hearted of parents! These are parents who braved the odds to give their daughters the chance of a better life which education provides, but have ended up biting their fingers for allowing their daughters to go to school on that very day.
Now, with many of the Chibok schoolgirls still in captivity, never mind the official figures of the rescued and returned ones, it may not be unduly pessimistic to believe that the Dapchi girls may also be in for another long stay with their captors. It is also worrisome that if the government does not act quickly, they may not be fully reconciled with their families for a long, long time, as has happened with some of the Chibok girls.
As noted in this column sometime ago, although winning an insurgency war like the one Boko Haram is waging against Nigeria is never a tea party anywhere in world, the failure of the federal government to get a winning strategy to bring the insurgency to an end is one of the greatest disappointments of this regime.
The expectation during the 2015 presidential campaign had been that the current president, who is an ex-soldier, a former military ruler and a leading light from the northern Nigerian base of the insurgents would, either through military force, moral suasion or outright bargaining, find a permanent solution to the Boko Haram insurgency. But, that has clearly not happened. Instead, what we have seen is that the Boko Haram snake, instead of being killed, has only had its head scorched. We have moved from a claim of the defeat of the sect, to a technical defeat only, and recently, a degradation of its capacity to launch attacks in the country. In fact, the president’s men had hardly finished thumping their own backs for destroying the sect’s capacity to launch attacks when the devils struck at Dapchi to prove them wrong.
Since then, all we have heard are accusations and counter-accusations between the leaderships of the Nigeria Police and the Army. The Army said it had withdrawn its troops from the area and handed over to the police because there had been “relative calm” in the area for some time, only for the Police to claim that the Army had not handed over its positions in the area to it. What type of wishy-washiness is this on an issue that involves the lives of children?
How, actually, was it possible for the terrorists to simply drive along the community’s road in the evening unchallenged, until they reached the school and picked all the girls they wanted without any resistance at all from security operatives either within or near the school? The recent directive that all schools should be provided with security suggests that security had become lax in the susceptible communities.
There were no watchtowers or Closed Circuit Television Cameras (CCTVs) that could be used to monitor the schools and other places that are susceptible to terrorist attacks. In effect, the girls were on their own, left to the caprices of anyone who desired to pick them up for sport! This, indeed, is a grave indictment of our security operations. It is not surprising, therefore, that many Nigerians have been expressing their anger over the initial conflicting reports on the abductions and the open disagreement between the police and the Army on the issue. The intervention of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, asking the two security agencies to take responsibility for the abductions as their buck-passing is unacceptable, is in order.
The kidnapping of the Dapchi girls followed the recent release of three staff members and a final year student of the University of Maiduguri, Borno State, and ten women, including a policewoman, who were abducted by Boko Haram about seven months ago.
The long and difficult process of negotiations which led to the release of the abductees clearly shows that the country cannot afford the ding-dong with Boko Haram on its abduction of Nigerians. According to the Director General of the Department of State Services, Alhaji Lawan Daura, the difficult negotiations involved different groups and foreign organisations, and mostly took place outside Nigeria.
Eventually, some suspected Boko Haram members “who were not found guilty of criminality” were released by the government in exchange for the girls. There were also discussions with the kidnappers on cessation of hostilities such as bombings by Boko Haram, in exchange for Nigeria’s temporary stoppage of air strikes on Boko Haram positions by the country’s helicopter gunships. In short, this would amount to the cessation of bombing of Sambisa forest for some time.
While commending the security agencies for securing the release of the abducted persons, it is clear from the terms of their release that this Boko Haram war is likely to go on ad infinitum. This is because the deadly terrorist group will likely keep abducting more and more people to get more and more concessions, so that it can sufficiently recover from the government’s continuing attacks on its Sambisa forest positions, and strengthen its operations to launch more deadly attacks. This, in fact, is a lose-lose situation for Nigeria.
But, what can the security agencies do? The lives of our abducted citizens are at stake and everything necessary must always be done to secure their release. What this situation should tell us all is that the only way out is to secure all citizens and reduce the chances of their abduction so that our military does not need to continue granting debilitating concessions to the insurgents.
On the matter of the kidnapped Dapchi girls, the security agencies must eschew double talk and go all out to get them back before it is too late. The longer they wait to secure their release, the more difficult it is likely to become, as has been seen with the Chibok girls.
With the devastation of the North East, the increasing number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in government-funded camps, the number of IDPs now also growing in Benue State because of the herdsmen crisis, the needless waste of lives, and the little revenue available to the government which is not enough to meet the nation’s needs, it is clear that this unending insurgency is a problem that the nation can ill afford. It should be speedily brought to an end.
Whatever needs to be done should be done now to bring the unending, money-guzzling and life-wasting conflicts in the country to an end to free time and funds to address the nation’s critical developmental challenges.
