On April 14, 2014, the five-year-old struggle by the federal government and its security forces got to a head when Boko Haram abducted about 276 girls from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state. After much prevarication, uncertainty and doubt by a government consumed by the ambition of returning to power in 2015, two weeks into captivity, the government woke up to the reality thatsomething serious had happened.
It is noteworthy that when the reality of the abduction hit Nigerians and the international community, the theme of the campaign to rescue the girls now came to include, ‘Ensure they come home alive’. All through the unsuccessful campaign to dislodge the insurgents, military might has been deployed while the insurgents operate in clear military fashion, dressed in military fatigue, moving in Hilux vehicles mounted with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. In several encounters it had been reported that our soldiers took flight because the insurgents were better armed!
The schoolgirls’ abduction was done smoothly and efficiently with the Nigerian security unable to counter the terrorists. In fact, one account is that the military were given two hours’ noticebutthey failed to act while the few soldiers on ground in Chibok when the operation by the group began, took to their heels!
Clearly, the Nigerian Armed Forces and its Commander-in-Chief, President Goodluck Jonathan, have shown incapacity and lack of sound strategy to contain Boko Haram. For this reason, 30 days after the abduction, the Jonathan administration accepted foreign assistance from the US, UK, France China and Israel, to help locate and rescue the girls, as well as stem the insurgency.
It, therefore, came as a shock to many Nigerians that after initial hint that it would negotiate with Boko Haram to return the abducted girls to their families unharmed; the Jonathan government has reneged on this promise. President Jonathan’s position on this issue was announced by a visiting UK minister and not one of his many spokesmen!
Clearly, in the past five years, Nigerians have suffered so much bereavement at the hands of Boko Haram due to the incompetence and lack of resolve by government.The Chibok girls must be brought back alive. Nigerians would not accept that these girls become sacrifices for the nation and go the way of the thousands who had died in the insurgency. We, therefore, reject the government’s hypocrisy and grandstanding and the sterile argument of western governments that they cannot negotiate with terrorists.
The federal government should note that accepting foreignintervention does not mean it would cede its authority to dictatorship. Before now, government had made half-hearted but futile efforts to negotiate with Boko Haram.And now that the group wants to talk to get its members in custody freed in return for abducted girls, some foreigners and neo-patriotic fat vultures in government, whose own daughters are in comfort elsewhere, have woken up to reject dialogue with the terrorists! It is not wise by any stretch of imagination to reject dialogue with this group, to secure the freedom of the girls and an end to the insurgency. The foreign military personnel are not here to start an Afghan-style counter-insurgency lasting many years!
We declare that the Chibok girls are prisoners of war in our context because the Boko Haram insurgency is like a war. Their abduction even came a few weeks after Senate President David Mark, who is opposed to negotiation, called for full declaration of war on the latter. If President Jonathan had done his work in the past four years and prevented the abduction, he would not be required now to negotiate with the terrorists!
Bring Back The Girls Alive! A word is enough for the wise.