The April 14-15, 2014 night kidnap of 276 girls from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, started with the impossible: it is impossible that ragtag militants would abduct school girls, in the supposedly secure sanctuary of their school, in a country secure by law.
With the October 13 release of the Chibok 21, pending further negotiations to release as many of the remaining 197 girls as are still alive, the odyssey appears set to end in the miraculous: after nearly three years in cruel captivity, it is sheer miracle that they are returning alive.
Between the impossible and the miraculous then lies the agony and shame of a nation. The Chibok girls are only prime victims.
The impossible must have weighed heavy on former President Goodluck Jonathan’s military commanders, who Amnesty International (AI) claimed had no less than four hours’ warning of the impending seizure.
Yet, they did nothing to reinforce security around the girls, from different local schools gathered in Chibok to write their final Senior School Certificate (SSC) examinations, because of the deteriorated security situation in the locale.
Now, the miraculous must be playing on the mind of President Muhammadu Buhari’s military commanders, whose lot is to clear the Chibok girls kidnap mess.
With the freeing of the initial 21, a Presidency release claimed the Boko Haram Islamists were ready to release another batch of 80, if the negotiating terms were right.
Inasmuch as there is good news from the Chibok front, the abiding message for the Nigerian government and people should be that no serious government ever subjects itself to the fatal comfort of assuming the impossible; or resigning to the inevitable miracle, which may well turn a mirage.
To avoid these two extremes, the simple answer is duty. To avert future embarrassments of this scale, the government must be more dutiful in its security responsibility to citizens. Eternal vigilance, after all, is the price of freedom!
Still, it is something of great cheer that 21 of the Chibok girls just regained their freedom. Even if you were stony-hearted, you cannot but be moved by pure thrill of the girls, who virtually fell asleep in the Stone Age captivity but jerked awake in a 21st century environment that radiates safety, comfort and bliss.
An abiding image from the saga must be the mother of that Chibok school girl, so galvanised with joy but confused with the surealness of it all, that she virtually strapped her daughter to her back, like a baby!
The Muhammadu Buhari Presidency has earned eternal kudos for this tremendous breakthrough. But so has the irrepressible Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) lobby, which put the pressure on, to put the girls’ fate on the front burner, both at home and abroad. Both deserve Nigerians’ praise and the girls’ gratitude for confronting one another to pull off such a pleasant and refreshing national result.
Which is why it is strange that a report claimed BBOG was blocked out of the girls’ reunion with their families. That, if true, is bad and uncalled for. The government may have griped at the impatience, and obdurate tactics of BBOG. But even the government must admit the humanity of their mission and the patriotism of their motive.
It is time, therefore, for both government and lobby to celebrate and reinforce each other in this moment of glory; not for one to resent and block out the other. They must work together and share ideas on how to free the remaining 197 girls, as soon as possible.
Having said all of these, however, the focus must stay on the girls. While everything humanly possible should be done to free those still in captivity, the wellness of the 21 just released must be the government’s priority.
It is good that the girls are not going home just yet. That is good because the government has taken the right step of medically examining the girls, psychologically de-traumatising them and looking at the best options to ensure they complete their education, either here or abroad.
In taking its decision, the government must consider possible stigma and discrimination against the girls in their Chibok locale and environs, for being victims of Islamist captivity, with all its agonising abuses, due to no fault of theirs. If the government must, on the basis of that, send them back to school elsewhere, so be it.
Indeed, as a mark of compensation by the Nigerian state, the government should make public concrete proposals on educating the girls to whatever level they may wish, at the expense of the state, with sustainable cash to back it up. Let it not be heard that after all the glitz and glamour and excitement of their release, everyone has moved on, again leaving the girls and their parents to their fate.
These girls were abused by outlaws they had no quarrel with, simply because the security apparatus of the state failed them. Now, that same state must compensate by turning them into future citizens, who would be reintegrated into their communities for the common good.
That is the only way we can seek closure to this unfortunate kidnap.
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