Maryam Uwais
On the morning of 15 April 2014, a very distressed guard told me that almost 300 girls from a Government Girls Secondary School were abducted in his hometown of Chibok. I looked at him in disbelief.
How do almost 300 girls get carted into trucks and taken away in one swoop?
Over the next few days my dread and apprehension became inescapable reality. As at the time of writing this, our girls still remain in captivity, 50 days after that awful night. In that period, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, beginning with one tweet and several protest marches across several state capitals of Nigeria, has focused the attention of the entire world to the plight of these 273 Nigerian girls, who were driven away without a trace into the Sambisa Forest. As a consequence, several countries have offered to support Nigeria in the rescue efforts. Meanwhile, protests continue and prayers are being offered, all over the world, for their safety and swift return.
Terror knows no boundaries; everyone, without exception, is affected by the bombings and killings. For once, Nigerians from all walks of life, irrespective of ethnicity or faith, are united on this singular effort and message. Our citizens have risen in an unprecedented show of unity, to demand that the girls be rescued, while the international community has been galvanized, in an awesome demonstration of human solidarity, to join Nigerians in this quest.
For me, as each day passes, and especially when the sun begins to fade, sobriety overwhelms me. I try to imagine what it must be like for those teenage girls in Sambisa Forest. I think of the descending dark of night enveloping them. I think of poisonous snakes slithering about around them. How do they keep clean and eat? How do they get access to clean water? I imagine them holding onto one another, crying and struggling earnestly to give one another courage.
Then I remember those evil men and my mind draws a blank. I cannot think any further. This must be every parent’s worst nightmare: that their child is kidnapped by armed men, to a place beyond reach, for days unending. I shudder with the thoughts of how the mothers and fathers and the Chibok community must feel; the suspense and the anguish they must be going through.
I resolve again and again that I must do all that I can to keep the issue on the front burner of the national discourse. I cannot sit at home and lament about the situation so helplessly; I must remain engaged and involved. I must find creative ways of collectively and constructively engaging our citizens on security concerns, and our leaders on how we can support them, to make our country a safer and more peaceful place to live in. We cannot allow that the girls be forgotten or sidelined by other ‘breaking news’, for that would amount to abandoning them (and their families) to a fate worse than death.
So I have committed to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, and we, as a coalition, have tried to engage our elected and appointed leaders who swore on the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to protect and secure our lives and our welfare. These include the leadership of the National Assembly, the Office of the National Security Adviser, the Minister of Defence, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Governor of Borno State and finally, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Our meetings with the National Assembly and the Office of the National Security Advisor were constructive and reassuring. But the disappointing response from the President, read by the Minister of State of the Federal Capital Territory, displayed an unfounded and unnecessary sense of defensiveness. Paradoxically, even though the content of his letter warned against politicizing the Chibok incident, the message from the executive continues to attribute politics to the discourse, in a matter that is so plainly about safeguarding the lives of vulnerable Nigerian citizens.
The narrative that has since emerged from our engagement with the President’s representatives suggests that Nigerians should direct their message to Boko Haram, to ‘release the girls’. The ‘bring back our girls’ message appears to place the blame on government for the incident. As far as the federal government is concerned, since it is not in custody of the girls, the demand should be directed at Boko Haram. Ever since then, our peaceful protests have been a target for intimidation. Women conveyed in government buses come to our place of gathering
