Maryam Ali Maiyanga is happy to be reunited with her family. It was a tearful reunion in October 2016. She was among the 276 girls that Boko Haram militants abducted from a government school in Chibok in northeastern Borno State, Nigeria, in April 2014, sparking a worldwide plea for their rescue and the social media movement and Twitter campaign #BringBackOurGirls.
Things have significantly changed for Maiyanga since that unfortunate night. As she holds her 10-month-old son, it is apparent that life will never be the same again for her.
“I am happy to be alive and reunited with my family. For the families of my sisters still missing, don’t lose hope, they will also be found,” says Maiyanga via a translator over the phone in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
Her discovery comes after 21 of the abducted girls were freed following negotiations brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the government of Switzerland.
Boko Haram, colloquially translated to “Western education is forbidden”, has claimed over 15,000 people and displaced some two million over the past seven years as part of its bid to establish an Islamic state in the north, according to Reuters. Its eradication was one of the main cornerstones of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s election campaign in 2015.
“This is positive news for our missing girls but the battle is far from over. The world should not rest until this injustice is laid to rest and all our girls have been returned to their families,” says Sekina Abdulai, founder of the Chibok Community in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
The release of the 21 girls although positive, is a bitter reminder of the fate of the other missing girls, some of whom are presumed dead, according to Abdulai.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, disclosed to reporters that the release of the girls was due to the persistence to close this negative chapter in the nation’s history.
“The circumstances behind the release of the girls are still unclear but it is believed that some large sums of money was exchanged as well as the release of some Boko Haram fighters,” says a source in the Office of the National Security Advisor (ONSA).
Fatima Alhassan’s daughter, Aisha, is still missing. When she heard about the release of the 21 girls, she took a bus from her hometown in the northeast to Abuja in the hopes of finding her in the group.
“A friend of mine told me some girls had been released and even though they did not call me, I decided to come and see if my daughter was here. Unfortunately, she was not but I am hopeful that like these girls she will return to me,” says Alhassan.
That reunion might be more imminent than she thinks.
“We are currently in talks with members of the militant group who want to negotiate the release of the girls. They say they are ready to talk if the government is willing to negotiate and it is our intention to do whatever we can to get these girls back,” says Garba Shehu, official spokesperson to President Buhari.
According to Shehu, 83 more girls are expected to be released in the coming months if negotiations with the militants remain positive.
For now, the government is unwilling to disclose what the militants want in exchange although sources close to the government believe there is a financial incentive on the table.
The focus now is the rehabilitation of the released girls. That task falls on the shoulders of Eleanor Nwadinobi, the women and girls’ manager of the Nigeria Stability and Recognition Programme.
“These girls have suffered a terrible ordeal and our rehabilitation efforts need to take a focused individual treatment approach. We have to provide trauma-counseling sessions, health-screening tests as well as ensuring that these girls have the best tools to successfully reintegrate back into society,” says Nwadinobi.
A source close to the current negotiations of the 83 girls disclosed on condition of anonymity that “given the current plight of the Nigerian economy, it is in the government’s interest to at least deliver on President Buhari’s bold claims of eradicating Boko Haram which his whole campaign was built on. To this effect, they will pay whatever amount and negotiate with the terrorists to get this type of good PR”.
According to Reuters, the 83 girls were with the faction of Boko Haram under the control of figurehead Abubakar Shekau who has split from Boko Haram after disregarding new instructions from Iraq and Syria naming Abu Musab al-Barnawi as its new leader for West Africa.
“This infighting might be the best opportunity for these poor girls who have already lost two years. If Shekau remains defiant, he risks being alienated from the group and therefore he needs more allies. I would imagine negotiations will include returning some of his loyal fighters back to him to help him regain his command,” says Frank Adu, a security consultant working in Abuja.
No matter what the reasons are for this apparent divide, the return of the 21 girls is symbolic of hope and an end to the torment and pain endured by their families. For those still missing, the battle lingers on. For now, hope is the only thing they can hold on to.

NIGERIA-UNREST-ISLAMISTS-CHIBOK

The Chibok 21

It is 16 years since Nigeria drew back from the abyss in the former colonial town of Kaduna. In February 1999, 5,000 Christians took to the streets in an anti-Sharia march to protest the introduction of the strict Islamic penal code. Their contention was that Nigeria’s constitution did not allow federation, or state, to adopt any religion.
The march sparked a deadly confrontation between Christians and Muslims. Three days of street fighting left at least 2,000 dead. President Olusegun Obasanjo dispatched troops as conflict threatened to spread. He managed to head off more fighting, but the rumpus around Sharia law did not go away.
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Obasanjo tried to persuade northern governors to hold off on Sharia law; days before, Kano in the north west, signed a Sharia bill. Weeks later, Zamfara State amputated the right hand of Buba Jangebe after a Sharia court convicted him of stealing a cow. Four northern states: Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi and Kano have adopted Sharia law since 1999 and Obasanjo’s negotiations.
Many northern politicians felt marginalized by the new republic under Obasanjo. They complained of a southern and Christian bias and latched onto the rigors of Sharia law to boost waning support.
Fast forward to 2015, as the six-year Boko Haram insurgency rages. Boko Haram has condemned northern governors who have adopted Sharia law. The militants believe the brand of Sharia law practiced in the country is not true Islam and have vowed to wage war until the entire country falls under their brand of Sharia. In this struggle, Boko Haram has captured around 20 small towns along Nigeria’s border with Chad and Cameroon. Militants have also taken larger towns like Mubi in the north eastern state of Adamawa.
Boko Haram renamed Mubi ‘Madinatul Islam’ or the City of Islam. Tens of thousands fled as the invaders hoisted their flag in the deserted emir’s palace and warned that ‘true’ Sharia law was now in force. A market thief was convicted by a Sharia court and his hand amputated to make the point.
Seventeen-year-old Aisha Ibrahim recalls the day Boko Haram rolled into town in with armored cars, trucks and motorcycles. She was still in school when the town reverberated to the sound of gunfire. She ran home to find her parents had fled, leaving her grandmother behind. In the fraught weeks that followed, she says, her best friend, Umma, was forced into marriage with one of the militants. She feared the same fate and fled to Yola in the hope of finding her parents and four siblings. Her father has not been found. She is now back in Mubi after the Nigerian army took back the second-largest commercial center in Adamawa State, after Yola.
Mubi is also the largest cattle trading center in Nigeria. The cattle rearing northerners use the Mubi cattle market as an important trading post to sell to traders from as far as Lagos.
These days the southern businessmen fear the trip north and the insurgency appears to be killing the meat trade, which has yet to recover from a recent truck drivers’ strike.
On the other side of the city, Pastor Titi Adewumi, leader of one of the many churches that dot the landscape of the Adamawa State capital, says residents are depressed by all the security checks. All movement between 12AM and 5AM is prohibited as part of a state of emergency. Interestingly, worshippers are searched before they enter their local mosque or church. But while Yola residents complain, they know things could be worse; Boko Haram, at the time of writing, were engaged in a fight to the death for the control of the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, where a total ban on all movement has been imposed.
In Mubi, there is hope. Retired Colonel, Taboyi Elam Dong, says the recapture of Mubi shows that the Nigerian military is winning the war against Boko Haram. Other towns recaptured include Gwoza in Borno State and Potiskum in Yobe State.
Most people here feel the government is not doing enough as hell lurks around the corner.

The People For Whom  Hell Lurks  Around The Corner

Good things happen. Bad things happen. Ugly stuff also happens. That’s life. Life inside Nigeria today has become a sour mix of the bad and ugly overshadowing the good.
The mind-boggling scale of the latest ugly incident was a daring assault on the conscience and sensibilities of Africa’s largest nation by population. It was a bold question mark on the quality of governance in Nigeria. In the dead of night, on April 14, 276 teenage girls were abducted from their boarding school, the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria.
As of going to press, well over a month after the abductions, most of the girls were yet to regain their freedom. About 40 have reportedly escaped.
The anti-establishment Islamist Boko Haram sect claimed responsibility for the dastardly act. In a video released to the media, the leader of the sect, Abubakar Shekau, vowed to sell the girls in the market and marry them off if his cohorts are not released from prison.
For days after the girls’ disappearance, Nigeria’s civil society, military and political elites were engulfed in a blame game. Propaganda was the order of the day, as it took nearly three weeks after the abductions before President Goodluck Jonathan issued a statement. The Nigerian leader’s credibility has suffered massive global and domestic erosion, says Opeyemi Agbaje, a public affairs commentator.
“His administration was left looking callous, insensitive and detached from reality.”
The outrage and protests from all corners of the world have been overwhelming for the Nigerian authorities.
“Facts are that regardless of afterthoughts that we are now being served by federal government, the institutional response to the fate of the girls was indifference,” says Oby Ezekwesili, a former vice president of the World Bank’s Africa division and former education minister in Nigeria.
Ezekwesili has been the most vocal member of the political cognoscenti leading the protests from the frontlines.
“It was only after our social media campaign migrated to street marches &#8211; Chibok women on April 29 and #BringBackOurGirls on the 30th – that we saw motion. Our pressure on the federal government to act… seems to irritate government,” Ezekwesili says.
Nigeria was the top item on global news bulletins for most of April and May – sharing the top spot with the coverage of the South Korean ferry mishap and the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms were abuzz with the #BringBackOurGirls and #ChibokGirls campaigns. The hash tags recorded over one million retweets within a couple of days in May.
On the ground, Bring Back Our Girls solidarity rallies were held in cities across the world, calling on the Nigerian authorities to fish out the girls from the Sambisa forests where they were purportedly being held captive by the militants.
A game reserve once renowned for its wildlife, the 60,000 square kilometer Sambisa forest, straddles parts of north-eastern Nigeria, bordering Chad and Niger. Sambisa village itself is flanked on the east by Gwozo town &#8211; another notorious hide out for Boko Haram insurgents &#8211; and the Mandara Mountains which form a natural barrier between Nigeria and Cameroon.
The online and offline protests galvanized international interest in Nigeria, transforming what was a local war against terror into a global crusade. Amnesty International and UNICEF backed the campaigns. Presidents, politicians, statesmen (and women) and celebrities including United States (US) first lady Michelle Obama and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while musicians Wyclef Jean and Chris Brown also added their voice to the campaign. Actors Sean Penn, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake and Bradley Cooper also threw their weight behind the campaign with the hashtag: #RealMenDontBuyGirls.
The tragedy of Chibok has been a public relations nightmare for Africa’s recently crowned largest economy. It was a bad time to be dealing with a militant gang with possible links to Al Qaeda-friendly groups in Mali, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Abuja had been eagerly preparing to host the world’s most influential business and political leaders at the 24th World Economic Forum on Africa in May. The forum was meant to be Nigeria’s coming out party. It was however overshadowed by the global angst.
“This is not the time for us to fight or play blame games, because this is really what the terrorists want, they want us to be divided… but if we stand together and fight this together, then terror will lose… world leaders have shown through their massive attendance at this forum that they we will not allow terrorists to dictate our agenda,” finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told reporters on the sidelines of the forum.
Government instructed schools as well as public and private offices in Abuja to close shop during the forum. Foreigners attending therefore saw a different country. They saw a near empty, sober Abuja devoid of its usual political tension, cosmopolitan communities and light traffic.
“Hosting the forum was part of a campaign to open the Nigerian economy to investors… By shutting down Abuja, the president has succeeded in telling the global community that Nigeria is not a good place to do business; that government can cripple their investments at will and without any care in this world,” Kenneth Ugbechie, publisher of the Nigeria Political Economist magazine wrote.
The United Nations (UN), African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have condemned the Chibok incident, urging Nigerian authorities to rescue the girls alive. Analysts say that the government must also begin to revamp the local and national ecosystem responsible for breeding insurgency – the dire social and economic conditions prevalent in most parts of northern Nigeria. Leading nations including the US, Britain, France and China have also offered to help the Nigerian government with security intelligence and technological support.
Beyond the urge to keep impressing upon international investors to look beyond Nigeria’s economic and political pains, it is clear that insurgent activities have had a negative impact on the country’s image and reputation. Amnesty International say that Boko Haram is responsible for more than 1,500 deaths in Nigeria this year alone.
The UN estimates that 300,000 people have been displaced by the militant group’s activities since May, 2009 when the extremist beast first bared its fangs.
<h4>Politics of Doubt and Disbelief</h4>
Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo believes that ambivalence and the political shenanigans of the Nigerian state is responsible for the inability of the authorities to react with alacrity to the kidnapping of the Chibok girls. In a television appearance, he said President Goodluck Jonathan had not truly believed that the girls had been abducted, hence his hesitation to order a rescue operation. 
“The president did not believe that those girls were abducted for almost 18 days,” Obasanjo said. 
“If the president got the information within 12 hours of the act and he reacted immediately, I believe those girls would have been rescued within 24 hours, maximum 48 hours. The president had doubts; ‘Is this true or is it a ploy by some people who don’t want me to be president again?’ I don’t believe he has performed to the expectations of many Nigerians, not just me.”

Tag: Abduction

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The Chibok 21

The People For Whom Hell Lurks Around The Corner

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