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 to restore order as conflict threatened to spread. He managed to head off conflict, but the rumpus around Sharia law did not go away.
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.
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. It was seen by the rest of the country as a political compromise.
Fast forward to 2015, as the six-year Boko Haram insurgency continues to rage. 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 was rocked by 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 a 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, his whereabouts unknown. 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 trade post to sell livestock to traders from as far as Lagos.
These days the southern businessmen fear to travel 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 about the quality of life, 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.

Aisha-Ibrahim1

The People For Whom  Hell Lurks  Around The Corner

The pursuit of Al-Shabaab militants by soldiers of the African Union and the Kenyan Defence Forces opened the country to a string of systematic retaliatory attacks that saw major tourist markets shy away.
The latest attack was the twin bombings in Nairobi’s sprawling Gikomba market in May that claimed the lives of 10 innocent Kenyans and left 70 others injured. This happened while Britain, France and Australia were busy evacuating their citizens from the coastal city of Mombasa. With every attack confirming just how porous Kenya’s security apparatus is, travel alerts are swiftly triggered.
The number of tourists from January to December in 2013 closed at 1.49 million – a 15.8% drop in comparison to the 1.7 million arrivals the year before. This further dims the hopes of ever attaining the Kenyan tourism ministry’s target of attracting 3 million visitors to Kenya’s parks, beaches and conservancies each year.
The tourism window earned east Africa’s biggest economy just over $1 billion in revenue during that period. Kenya can ill afford that figure dropping. And while the dwindling numbers are worrisome, the administration in Nairobi maintains it will not relent on its campaign against extremists.
Kenya’s main tourist source markets, including Britain, the United States, Italy, India and Germany, exhibited the biggest decline in numbers in 2013, however a quick glance at the arrival numbers from Africa shows signs of a market that has been long ignored and whose potential is yet to be fully realized. Uganda maintains its number one slot as an African source market for Kenya, bringing in 47,398 visitors in 2013 alone, followed by South Africa and Tanzania.
The introduction of a 16% value added tax levy on parks and conservancy fees in September by the Kenya Revenue Authority caused another bout of panic in an already fragile industry.
Fears were rife that the change would lead to a hike in the cost of hotel bookings and travel expenses; further discouraging European and western tourists that are still licking their wounds from the Eurozone crisis. It was not long before tourists voted with their feet, cementing many analysts’ assertions that the move to slap the industry with the extra levy was proof of the government’s doublespeak.
The lack of government involvement in the marketing of this vital sector is often a hot topic at many tourism workshops. Having just returned from a tourism indaba in South Africa, Minaz Manji, the managing director of Twiga Tours, who has operated in the East African tourism space for the past three decades, reckons that governments are doing very little to promote the tourism resource at their disposal.
In the 2014/15 budget estimates, the Kenyan government set aside $22.9 million for the tourism docket with $14.8 million going into recurrent projects and the balance for development. It is this figure that infuriates Manji and many other players in this space.
“How many billboards or TV adverts can you put in Europe or Asia when you only have $8 million for a whole year. Is this government serious?” asks Manji.
The obsession with the bush and the beach by East Africa’s tourism bodies, including the Kenya Tourism Board, has also come under sharp criticism. Players in the sector point to destinations like the Kremlin in Moscow. It attracts a million visitors every three months to sample its history, perhaps proof that diversifying tourism in Africa should quickly gain traction.
In recent months, international hotel chains like Hemingways, Best Western Premier and Villa Rosa Kempinski have set up shop in Nairobi while the New York Stock Exchange-listed hotel chain, Wyndham, plan to enter the Kenyan market at the end of the year. These developments have left 6 million spaces for Kenya’s tourism industry to fill, creating a lot of room to attract investors.
There are no quick solutions in the quest to save Kenya’s tourism sector, but there are low hanging fruits that would set it on the right track in the short term. Kenya needs to amend taxation laws to make it favorable for operators, increase funding for the promotion of tourism and look at developing joint regional marketing of the East African region to make it an attractive destination once again. All of this, however, can only be possible if Kenya successfully tackles the escalating terror threat.

Tag: Militants

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Chibok 21

The People For Whom Hell Lurks Around The Corner

Tempt Tourists Back