Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.
In the wee hours of 15th
April of 2014, the boarding students of Government Secondary School, Chibok
were relieving the stress of the external examinations. Some were in their beds
while others may be burning the candles in an ill-fated attempt towards
brightening the prospects of their very bleak Nigerian future when a group of
militants, largely believed to be Boko Haram insurgents, gave them an
unanticipated awakening, rounded them up, unperturbed by the Nigerian security
agents in an attack that spanned for more than two hours. After the attack,
over two hundred girls were reported missing.
As days passed by, hopes for an
early rescue or even a decisive reaction by the government dissipated as these
girls and their families are now left in an uncharted emotional territory and
all but to their own devices.
So far, it is evident that
for all the results generated by the government as a response, the families of
these girls and the girls themselves have produced better results than the
increasingly clueless government. The families of these girls have organized
search groups while some of the girls, probably informed by the government’s
impotence have taken matters into their own hands and thus, have managed to
escape their captors probably out of sheer serendipity or even divine bread
crumbs dropped by the heavens for the Nigerian government, the heedless Hansel.
It is indeed the case that in the face of such governmental powerlessness and
systemic fragility, eyes tend to turn to the skies in the faint hope that God
could demonstrate at least enough clemency to wipe the tears off the faces of
these unfortunate families who have been forced to endure these long days of
nightmares and scary permutations.
Expecting the heavens to
handle every governmental or human ineptitude tantamount to a desperate “Deus
ex machina” mentality, which would most likely not be rewarded. A
popular adage has already warned that “heaven only helps
those who help themselves”. There is the thought that God himself would be
easily exasperated by the level of cruelty manifested in the unraveling of this
human drama (Genesis 6:5). It is a drama with a capacity to be viewed as a
comedy by the exploitative politicians who count votes while others count body
bags, in a sick twist of schadenfreude. It is a drama with a capacity to
develop into a tragicomedy if the government finds some resolve, empathy and
sincerity. Lastly, there is a palpable feeling that this drama would result in
a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions if it is not handled with the
seriousness and urgency it deserves. However, as the government sits on its
hands, the Chibok Kidnapping provides a deeper look into the hearts of men and
their dispositions as this may be the crucial reason why these girls are yet to
be reunited with their parents. The hearts of men as Joseph Conrad would note,
is the “Heart of Darkness”. Therefore, there is
the need to call a spade a spade and thus confront the obscure cruelty that may
have kept these daughters from their families.
Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.
Cruelty is a word, which most
men would not want to be associated with. It is a pariah word. This is largely
because the image of man as produced by societal conventions is the image of a
largely benign being despite the fact that experiences suggests that man has as
much capacity for cruelty as he has for humaneness. There is then, the need to
define cruelty so as to understand the parameters used in the categorizations
and the accusations that would later be made in this piece. “Cruelty”
has been defined as the disposition to inflict pain or suffering. It has also
been defined as being devoid of humane feelings. Thus, cruelty is not just the
disposition to inflict pain bust most crucially, it is the indifference to the
plights of others.
This dual understanding of “cruelty”
would help us understand how our lack of humaneness has caused the kidnap of
our sisters and daughters. Firstly, it must be understood that with the kidnap
of these innocent school girls and their rumored maltreatment, Boko Haram has
plunged new depths in their cruelty. Blowing up men and properties into bits
and pieces is cruel, but at least, it is final for the families of the
affected, and in a way, it is impersonal to the insurgents. Possibly, the bombs
are planted and detonated from a distance and so, the insurgents watch the
carnage from a distance and or read the results of their dastardly acts on the
national dailies but this kidnap is no longer impersonal to these insurgents
even as extraneous circumstances forced the death of two abductees. Holding and
sexually abusing a teenager against her will is extremely cruel but crueler is
the realization of the kind of torture the affected families undergo each
passing day their daughters and sisters stay with their abductors.
Their places on the beds are
vacant; their absence at the kitchen is distressing while their friends wonder
if the girl that was abducted would still be the one they would find. Would she
have lost her virginity to the forced marriage? Would she come back with some
bastards? Would her mind withstand and or survive the putrid experiences
or would her mind succumb to this unimaginable horror? The sufferings of
these concerned families and friends are accentuated by the fact that they do
not know where their children are or whether they are dead or alive. Thus, we
can say that over two hundred families are living their hell on earth because
their hopes are paradoxically underscored by their despair and are tainted by
the same.
Onye sikwa ma o buru
ya.
Accusing only Boko haram as
being the only guilty party in this tale of abstruse cruelty is lazy. The
Jonathan-led administration and the politicians perhaps intentionally or even
unwittingly demonstrate their own variations of cruelty. This cruelty could be
traceable to the inertia of the incumbent administration that appears to be
sitting on its hands with regards to the kidnap debacle or the threats of the
insurgency in general. This inertia could be translated as insensitivity to the
plights of the citizenry who are now well fed-up with the clichéd verbiage that
comes from the President or Reuben Abati. It was this line of thought that led
to one of the fathers of the kidnapped girls submitting in a telephone
interview with a leading online newspaper that they have been abandoned by the
government because they are “poor”
and have “no influence whatsoever”.
It would appear that the
policy makers need to be affected before tangible strides to check this tragedy
would be taken. Thus, Olusegun Agagu, a political stalwart of the south-western
extraction needed to die “twice” before the
government would press for serious reforms in the aviation sector. Could the
distraught father have been right that they were neglected because they lacked
the clout to force a governmental response or even sieve out any sort of
sincerity from them? Another facet of this cruelty is evident in the
insensitive or nonchalant PR moves recently made by the administration. While
his decision to go ahead with the hosting of the Economic Forum could be
apologized for as an expedient bravado, his decision to continue his 2015
reelection campaign sticks out like a sore thumb.
It grinds the gears of these
affected people that the presidential campaign adverts and his campaign
schedules still go on at these periods of national mourning and pensiveness.
Simply put, with his reelection bid going on simultaneously with the search for
these Chibok girls, the president has unleashed a bull in a china shop. This is
not to say that the President should abandon his reelection bid but to state
that a better PR manager would have advised the president that a show of
support or an overt display of his humaneness is the best campaign he could do
right now. People need to see Mr President walking the talk.
Furthermore, securing the
rescue of these girls by whichever means necessary would guarantee him the
votes of the friends and families of the affected. Politics indeed can be a
force for good. It is worrisome that people do not exploit these legitimate
channels to further their campaign goals rather doling out money and condiments
that hardly survive the month. The current approach of the administration is an
affront to the affected families who would be further devastated by the
realization that their daughters’ lives have been
abandoned at the instance of politics.
Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.
There is the fear that a
tragedy this grave would be reduced to politics or as I have pointed out in an
earlier piece, disaster porn. The campaigns to bring back these girls that have
been so callously taken from us have been tainted by some unscrupulous
politicians and political jobbers whose plastic distress only just veils their
schandenfreude. These suffering girls are often used by the politicians as a
pretext to subtly make political demands or even present themselves as Midas
possessing the golden touch that would teleport us from this inferno to utopia.
For these politicians, their disappointments, distress and commiserations are
just skin deep as their endgame goes deeper than the rescue of these innocent
girls. Their endgame is not surprising; they are after all politicians who must
keep an eye on the opportunities presented by this Chibok kidnapping and the
strategic edge it may give them ahead of the 2015 polls.
An instance is in the
consistent calls on the president to resign as a consequence of his inability
to stem the tide of the onslaught. These politicians do not escape suspicions.
If they had any strategy that would lead to a favorable resolution of this
issue and are just waiting to win elections before they would deploy these
strategies, then they must be cruel. Their insincerity has the capacity to
sabotage the whole #BRINGBACKTHEGIRLS campaign. Playing politics with the lives
of two hundred girls demonstrates a lack of empathy which is a vital quality
for any prospective leader.
Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.
Furthermore, there is an
ostensible cruelty in the ignorance of a large majority of Nigerians regarding
the Chibok kidnapping. At this instance, ignorance assumes drastically cruel
proportions. This ignorance and disinterestedness is most detectable in the
Southern parts of Nigeria who have come to view the North-east more or less as
a theatre. This disinterestedness is a cause for worry in the south east. Thus
for the south-easterners, as long as their relatives were not affected by
the Chibok Kidnnapping, the incident was most likely heard in the news and then
dismissed with a shrug or at best a half-hearted prayer. For the Igbos who
still feel some tinge of bitterness for the Biafra civil war and their
persecution within the Nigerian state, as far as the “Hausas
kidnap and kill themselves”, it is karma.
There are even arguments that
the insurgency was a self-inflicted abscess which was initially fomented to
destabilize the Jonathan-led administration and force him out of office. This
argument is lent some disturbing credence by the comments of Sheikh Gumi, a
northern Islamic scholar who seemed to think that Boko Haram would end as soon
as Jonathan vacates the presidency. This would explain why empathy for the
north is a scarce commodity in the most parts of the south. This would explain
the apathy that pervaded the Chibok kidnap saga in the south. To understand the
issue clearly, I ran an impromptu interview on Facebook where I asked twelve
people, five boys and seven girls all between the ages of 18 and 24 whether
they have heard of the Chibok Schoolgirls kidnap. Of the ten respondents, nine
did not know that over two hundred girls were missing.
Only one of the respondents
said that he is aware of the plights of his age mates who have been away from
home for over two weeks. One of the respondents who I told the story of the
kidnap asked me what she was going to do with it. This begs some questions, why
would our brothers in diaspora and expatriates be so vibrant in the
#BringBackOurGirls campaign when the people who are supposedly living the
terror do not care about it? How could we cohesively galvanize efforts and
supports across the country when a great number of us do not know and sometimes
do not just want to know? For perspective sake, the Twitter channel dedicated
for this campaign @BringGirlsBack has just over two thousand followers.
In a country that has over
five million twitter users, two thousand followers, some of whom are just
concerned foreigners, is not good enough. We must not always resort to asking
for help from the international community is doing to help. As invaluable as
their help may prove to be, we must take the initiative to seize the bull by
the horns. The comments of the First Lady who is willing to brave mortal peril
in finding answers to this Chibok puzzle must be commended. That is the right
sort of politics or at least, the right sort of rhetoric. The ignorance and the
inactivity of most part of the south are cruel.
Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.
Summarily, national and
global protests are good, the Twitter channel dedicated to this campaign is
applaudable, the tears that have been shed by the politician be it genuine or
mere crocodile tears must be hailed for efforts but unfortunately, these are
the minimum. There is the need to tell ourselves the truths are; the kidnap was
avoidable and the rescue of these girls is possible. Their captors, the
insurgents have lives, families and loved ones, our intelligent community needs
to start working on their traceable links if they would ever prove to be
intelligent. A greater and better level of intelligence gathering would see
these girls rescued with little risks. Rescue operations have been undertaken
in the past, no lest by the US, our very public allies.
Another truth is that rash
actions may trigger the massacre of the surviving girls and put out the faint
light at the end of the tunnel, street protests and political tirades must take
note of this fact too. Another truism is that there is need for empathy cutting
across different social strata and ethnicities. There is the need for an
expedient unity across different political parties and a greater level of
sincerity and information sharing between them. The All Progressives Congress
and The People’s Democratic Party must realize before it is too late
that counting votes is easier than counting bodies. The tragedy does not favour
any of them; it is distorting the very fabric of the Nigeria’s
political system. The government needs to wake up to the softer part of their
humanity. We all have to learn to put ourselves in the shoes of these
unfortunate girls and their families. Succinctly put, we must learn to
personalize tragedies.
Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.
I have a beautiful teenage
sister who brightens our family with her uncommon brilliance and energy, God
forbid that anyone would take her!
okwuanyavin@gmail.com
tweet @tovincentokwy
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