By Cudjoe Kpor
It is time to forget about the governments at both Federal and state levels in the search for the missing 219 Chibok schoolgirls. Yes, we all know the Federal Government under ex-president Goodluck Jonathan never took the requisite steps to protect the girls against kidnap and never made any effort to rescue them either. On the contrary, Governor Kassim Shettima’s Borno state government made enormous efforts to search for and rescue the abducted girls since the April 14, 2014 national shame of their kidnap. But unfortunately, the state’s best efforts were not good enough to find them, let alone rescue them.
To date, we know that out of the 276 girls kidnapped that night, 52 of the 57 brave ones who contrived to escape by their own efforts are being sponsored by Borno government in various schools across the country. Of the remaining, we know of five who were smuggled out to the US by an NGO to continue their education there too. The remaining 219? We know nothing. Total blank.
President Muhammadu Buhari has once again ordered a full investigation into the kidnap and disappearance of the girls. It is easy to dismiss such multiple investigations as buying time and hoping for a break. But it is also possible to see the importance of further investigation after Jonathan government’s Presidential Fact-finding Committee report concluded that the military was mostly ill-equipped and ill-motivated to help the girls in their hour of distress. Chaired by Brigadier-General Ibrahim Sabo (rtd), former director of Military Intelligence, the committee’s report submitted since June 20, 2014, said the military was to blame for failure to prevent kidnapping of the 276 female students from their hostel three months earlier and worse, for failure to rescue them when the tragedy happened.
But perhaps, just perhaps, a new investigative panel’s presence in Borno State will encourage other brave schoolgirls to crawl out of the woods where the insurgents have hidden them in harems. Then again, it is also possible that hindsight may allow the new panel to latch onto something else the previous Sabo panel might have missed in the noisy brouhaha of those tension-soaked days of blames and denials.
While the new panel sits, forget about the security agencies, too. Their cluelessness is what made ex-president Goodluck Jonathan equally clueless about their whereabouts after he wilfully failed to even make the least effort to rescue them during those critical first 48 hours to 72 hours when their abduction trail was still fresh into Sambissa Forest. Rather, Jonathan was reported to be very busy suspecting that the abduction was the opposition’s conspiracy to overthrow his government.
So, forget about the Armed Forces, too. Not only because General Sabo’s committee indicted them while it gave a clean bill to Borno State government in the abduction national shame. But because, now, their hands are full. They have to mop up highly mobile Boko Haram insurgents across the three epicentre states at the same time in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe in order to enable 2.6 million IDPs to regain their communities.
I would have said, forget about the distraught, wailing and agonising parents and relations as well. But it is likely that apart from very close friends the missing girls may still trust, the parents may be among the first to hear from the girls who can break free and flee from their insurgent husbands. So their parents are still part of the solution.
Change of strategy:
It is time even BBOG activists can beat their chests for excellent work done to keep the memories of the girls alive over the past nearly two years. In a country where a daily concatenation of crises follow one another with each more devastating than the previous day’s, the Chibok girls would have been history within the first hundred days. Not even the Jonathanians’ labelling of BBOG as “nuisances” could deter them. So, once we have seen the back of the illiterates’ bad government of Jonathan, the daily meeting at the Unity Fountain Park in Abuja may cede place to once a fortnight or even once a month gathering to assess and compare notes about updates.
Strategy
Now that the new Buhari government has proved allied to finding and rescuing all the girls, the reminders with daily outings at the Unity Fountain, indispensable to the hostile Jonathan government, are now superfluous. The same way Jonathan’s government supporters put out the empty propaganda that the entire kidnap of the 276 girls that night by Boko Haram militants was a hoax which never took place, obtuse as a matter of fact in retrospect. But the continued reminders to the Buhari government with the daily outings would not achieve much, if anything anymore. There is no way anybody can rescue girls, or anyone for that matter, whose whereabouts he does not know precisely.
Questions…questions…more questions…
So even those who insist that the Buhari government and its security agencies should admit the futility of all use of force and rather negotiate their release with Boko Haram insurgents, will find out that they are bargaining for only 10 Chibok girls and 209 non-existent phantom “girls” who are ensconced with their insurgent husbands on Lake Chad islands, very far from any single Boko Haram leader’s knowledge or control.
So, everybody, BBOG activists, friends, family members, even the clueless security agencies must join the unorganised search again. Instead of looking for large groups of remnants of the 219 girls, such as 10, 20, 50 girls, let everyone start looking for ONLY ONE authentic, abducted schoolgirl. Anyone who can afford it may hire private detectives to join the search.
Then Borno State Governor Kassim Shethimah and perhaps, Etisalat, as another of its usual CSR programmes, may take the lead and set up a toll free telephone line with a simple three-digit emergency hotline number for any of the girls to call Shettima’s house. I hope the 7 Division military has restored communication to Borno State in general and Chibok in particular.
That way, a three-way link to Government House, Maiduguri (or Shettima House) must be possible. Then prank and crank callers must be sifted off immediately by connecting to parents with handsets: At least Federal Government can buy 219 Samsung handsets for the parents for swift, easy identification either by voice or by filter questions parents know only their genuine daughters will have answers to. No doubt a correct answer will make a family’s day!
Just one girl is all we need as a starting point of contact with those who are still alive and well in any locality. Even the hope is that she must be married to a polygamous insurgent with three rivals. That makes four of the girls as a starting point.
So, all concerned must focus on identifying, ascertaining the authenticity and encouraging only one Chibok girl, to come forward to Governor Shettima’s house, just in case she does not want to go to the Chibok bush again.
Then we are off to a good start of luring them out of their hideouts. Especially if radio FM stations will join in spreading the message to attract them out to Shettima house.
Every single one may be able to lure out at least one of her friends she made in the Sambisa Forest before they were married to the insurgents and dispersed – to anywhere.