Advertising agency, Noah’s Ark, has launched campaign in print, radio, and online to remind the authorities to expedite action to rescue the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014.
Managing Director, Lanre Adisa, said the move was born out of concern for the girls and their parents who are in agony.
The girls’ plight gained traction on Twitter last year using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, attracting high-profile political figures such as the wife of United States President, Michelle Obama; former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton; and British Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Adisa said though President Muhammadu Buhari has put some measures in place to rescue the girls, more needs to be done by the international community, especially the corporate world, to sustain the momentum and awareness.
The print campaign material is in three different formats.
The posters show the pictures of three African Presidents, Buhari (Nigeria), Idris Derby (Mali), and Paul Biya (Cameroon), all wearing veils to depict the Islamic religious coloration of the crisis.
The other flyers are just figures of veils without faces to symbolise that the kidnapped girls could just be anybody’s daughters, hence the need for all to demand that something urgent be done to effect their release.
The third print material are stickers with faceless veils in black on white background.
The online materials are equally portent as the pictures paint sad reminders of the precarious situation of the girls in captivity.
One is a photograph of a traditional grind stone with a hand grenade on it, a symbol of feminine action in limbo; the second photograph is a mortar with a rocket launcher in place of the pestle, also portraying what other uses some of the girls may have been involved or put up with.
Another online video campaign awakens the consciousness of the Muslim community to show more pragmatic concern on the matter.
It shows a scene in a mosque where they hide the shoes Muslims leave behind at the mosque entrance while they pray.
They finish prayer and look for the shoes. Then they are reminded of the missing girls and the need to spare some minutes in prayer for them.
The import is that if we can be concerned with the loss of mere shoes we can buy in the market, how come we bother less about the missing girls?
A food for thought.