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These are perilous times in Nigeria when events mock at human foresight and the only thing that is certain is the unforeseen and the unimaginable. We are at a time in the country when one cannot but agree totally with William Shakespeare, the 19th Century English play writer, who, terrified by the events of his time, concluded that it was “either there is strife in heaven, or the earth so saucy with the gods incenses insurrection”.
In the last few days, the biggest story in town has been the release of 105 out of 110 abducted Dapchi school girls by a band of Boko Haram who just walked into the school one cool evening in February this year and made away with the girls that, Nigerians have been told, were taken to a safe haven, fed very well, taken good care of, and clothed in fine apparels with traveling bags for their return home.
For the sleepy rural Dapchi community in Yobe State, especially the homes where these girls belong and the school from where they were taken away, it was joy and jubilation for their children who were lost but found, children thought dead are now alive and will soon be reunited with their respective families.
For the All Progressives Congress (APC)-controlled Federal Government, it is a feat that no government in Nigeria, especially the Goodluck Jonathan’s government, was able to achieve in 16 long years. It is even part of their achievement that only 110 girls were taken from Dapchi while 206 girls were abducted from Chibok when Jonathan was in charge.
For that reason, the government and its officials have been grinning from ear to ear, throwing banters, clinking glasses, beating their chest, and telling whoever cares to listen that once again, they have beaten Jonathan’s record on security matters, particularly on the safety of lives and property including the release of abducted school girls.
Though Nigerians are alleging that a huge ransom estimated at 50 million Euros was paid to secure the release of the girls, Lai Mohammed, the highly cerebral and illustrious information minister of the Federal Republic, insists the release of the girls was ‘negotiated’ but they were released “unconditionally”.
The good news however, is that unlike the Chibok girls who, since April 2014, have been languishing in the den of the Boko Haram insurgents, the Dapchi girls have been lucky, regaining their freedom barely one month after. That actually calls for jubilation as witnessed in their school and the community.
But there is a sore part to the whole story that everybody seems to be glossing over. Government has confirmed that 104 out of the 110 girls that were taken away have returned, meaning that six of them are still at large. Five of them are said to have died from suffocation, while one is still alive but is being withheld by the terrorists as a prisoner of conscience. As a Christian, the girl has refused to be converted to Islam and that is her sin!
The Bible is a perfect literature ever given to man, not only because of its lucid and incontrovertible moral teachings, but also for its capacity to chronicle the past, mirror the present and periscope the future based on man’s propensities and dispositions.
Nothing can be more apt to describe the fate of the one Dapchi school girl left as prisoner of conscience in the hands of Boko Haram than the parable of the lost sheep contained in the Bible with which Jesus taught his disciples the cost and importance of any single soul in the scheme of things in God’s Kingdom.
According to the Biblical story, a man had 100 sheep and suddenly he discovered that one of them had strayed. Instead of glossing over this loss, as a Muhammadu Buhari government seems to have done with the one Dapchi school girl, the sheep owner abandoned the 99 others and went in search of the lost sheep.
When Joe Igbokwe, the APC spokesman in Lagos State, at a television programme on Thursday morning, argued that no amount of money (if paid) could equal the life of a single girl in captivity, it was clear he did not have this prisoner of conscience in mind even-though what he said was absolutely true.
Like the sheep owner, Buhari, Lai Mohammed and all the APC followers should deny themselves of sleep, talk less and work harder for the return of that Dapchi school lost sheep. Whether they know it or not, sorrow for one is sorrow for all and it has to be noted that the joy and jubilation in the families of the 104 girls that have returned are directly proportional to the sorrow, anguish and frustration in the family of that lost sheep.
The need and urgency of that girl’s return becomes all the more compelling given the secular nature of Nigeria and the freedom of worship as enshrined in the nation’s constitution. No one should impose or coerce anybody to accept his faith. That Dapchi school girl deserves nothing less.
Surreptitiously, religion, drawing both strength and blood from ethnicity, is tearing this country apart. The country’s security architecture has been polarised along these lines and that aptly explains why governance and leadership in the country find meaning and relevance in the theatre of the absurd.
After the Chibok school girls’ incident, a country with good leadership that believes in intelligence gathering in its security system would have said ‘never again’. But that has not happened. Instead, the Dapchi school experience is even messier as the government and its managers spend time comparing the scale and dimension of crimes- a case of saying ‘my incompetence is better than yours’.
It was strongly alleged that a few hours before the girls were taken away, there was an official directive to all security operatives on the way to the school to leave the road such that the abductors rode in a convoy to the school, took away their victims, and went back the same way without any challenge from anywhere and anybody, not even the local vigilante whose children were being take away.
That same scenario repeated itself as the girls were brought back to base, but our dear minister explained that the action was part of the negotiation- that there should be no confrontation or violence so that the little Nigerian queens would return safely to where they were taken away from.
A lot of questions have been raised as to what government wants to achieve with this macabre dance that has made it an object of ridicule in the eyes of both local and international communities. How can Nigerians be convinced that government was not the mastermind of this abduction considering the sequence of events? Why does this government choose to waste tax payers’ money on such foolery as this?
For over a year now, this government told the whole world that Boko Haram, which is carrying out all these acts, had been decimated and that the troops were only contending with the fleeing remnants of the terrorist group that has wiped out communities, displaced families and destroyed local economy of the people of North East Nigeria.
Whose script is the government acting and who is writing the script? Nigerians are wondering why innocent school girls are being dragged into this fray and their parents traumatised in the name of politics? If the government overnight has become dexterous in security issues, why find it almost impossible to deal with the rampaging Fulani herdsmen, or secure the release of the remaining Chibok girls still in the custody of the insurgents?
For three years, all that the Buhari government has been able to achieve are making life difficult for Nigerians, indulging in blame game, criminalising everybody and anybody and telling the whole world that, as Ezekiel Nya-Etok of Nigeria First Project put it, “our failure and incompetence are better than yours”.
At no time have Nigerians been so pushed to the wall at all fronts such that almost all clothes are now bursting at their seams. In the opinion of Israel Okayi, a political affairs analyst, the only way for Nigerians to assuage their pains is to keep a date with history come 2019. “The ballot box is the cure if only we will subscribe to it”, he assured.
CHUKA UROKO
