For about one hour and 10 minutes, a former Vice President of the World Bank, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, fielded questions from The Nation on Sunday on the #BrinBackOurGirls Campaign. She spoke with Managing Editor, Northern Operation, Yusuf Alli and Senate Correspondent, Sanni Onogu report the encounter.
Harcourt about the fate of these abducted girls did you expect that the campaign would get to this extent? How did the inspiration come?
Before I spoke in Port Harcourt, if you are on Twitter, you would have known that the occurrence of the Nyanya bombing on the morning of April 14 had really gotten me so frustrated and angry in the sense that I twitted and I said ‘citizens are not this helpless and hopeless. Why are we not able to be part of this conversation on the things that are going on? That there is something about the condition of our security that is beginning to really require citizens lifting their voice. So I twitted from my handle ‘do you have a citizen solution to end terrorism?’ Tweet at me any idea that you have. You are a citizen. I am a citizen. Do you have an idea? Is there something you feel that should be done? Tweet at me. I sent that out. That whole day people were tweeting at me. By the following morning we then heard 200 and something girls – you know initially it was 100 and something girls – abducted. I was like God! What is going on here? (Laughs) you know that made me engage more on the issue of this act of terrorism. I said ‘our girls are not equally safe?’ So I engaged my followers on twitter that whole period and they were twitting. By the next day being the 16th there were over a thousand plus ideas that citizens had tweeted at me. So I just said what am I going to do with this? Because frankly speaking it was basically a way to let out the frustration of being in a place where you are not even…you really don’t know the gravity of what is going on but you see so much that is happening around you. You suddenly are like helpless and powerless about what to do. So I scented the sense that citizens must surely have ideas and all of those solutions were coming. By that second day I said oh, why don’t you just hand it over to one of these Citizens Groups: ‘Enough is Enough’ that are also on twitter? And I tweeted at Enough is Enough and I said would you take over to compile all of these solutions that have been tweeted? And they took over to compile it. They were working on and meanwhile, we were waiting to hear the news about these girls. No news! So every day, I tweeted and I will say ‘what is going on with the girls that have been abducted?’ ‘Why are we not getting any information on them?’ That carried on.
How did the Port Harcourt link come about?
By the 23rd when I was a key part of the World Book Capital for Port Harcourt for UNESCO, I said it has become abnormal. I said ‘this is a huge audience. This is an audience discussing books. The girls went to school. If we finished our event here without a focus on the matter of the school girls who went to acquire knowledge and were abducted, it would be totally not normal.’ So I asked the Executive Director of the Rainbow Book Club which I chair as their Board of Trustees and which was the reason that Port Harcourt went through the competition and beat other cities in other countries and I said Koko before the programme started that ‘we must do something to raise everybody to stand in solidarity with the abducted Chibok girls. So, we agreed this as part of our programme. We did not even know that Professor Wole Soyinka’s speech was going to be on the abducted girls because he was the keynote speaker. We were the co-organizers.
So when Professor Wole Soyinka started speaking, his whole speech was around the issue of religion, particularly Islam, terrorism and then he came down to the issue of the abducted girls and referred to the BringBackOurBooks that he had been part of. When it was time for us to ask for the solidarity of everybody that we must stand with these girls, I asked the people and I said, ‘I want us to stand in solidarity with the families of these girls and to stand with these girls because if you know how tough it is to get girls into the school system especially in the North – a difficult project – and now that project is being reversed by what has happened, we must all stand and identify with the cause of these girls. So please join us – Koko and myself – in saying: Bring Back Our Daughters.’
Then I went back to my seat and I tweeted: ‘I have just asked’ – and everybody rose in unison. People watched it live so they saw what was going on – so I sat and I tweeted: ‘Here in Port Harcourt, the whole audience has just risen in empathy and solidarity with the girls of Chibok. Please join us, lend your voice and all I say bring back our girls.’ Apparently, there was also a young man, somewhere here in Abuja who was watching the programme in Port Harcourt and when I made that declaration, he also had tweeted and said, ‘Oby Ezekwesili declares: Bring Back Our Daughters, Bring Back Our Girls.’ And so when I sat down and I did my tweet, I saw his tweet because he had copied me also and I re-tweeted his tweet and then put that tweet asking people just tweet, keep saying BringBackOurGirls. The rest became history in terms of the social media. While the social media was building up and really building up, people we tweeting bring back our girls, the days were going – 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th – no coherent information was coming out about these girls. Everybody was getting agitated.
Did this lead to the emergence of BringBackOurGirls group?
I recall that I actually spoke to some people and I said ‘goodness, how can we just not hear anything yet.’ There were times when, I think, I even went out of my way to tweet at some people that I will not normally tweet at saying: ‘what’s wrong? What’s going on?’ And about the 27th of April, I read an e-mail that was sent to me and it was from Mariam Uwais and Hadiza Bala Usman and the discussion was basically that women should go out on the streets to ask for our girls. So I replied them and I said ‘on the social media, I have been demanding that these girls be brought back since this occurrence and I told them about the citizens’ solution. I said I should be traveling but on that day I am going to take down my travel. It is that important that we should demonstrate that we are standing with the families that have been affected by this unsavoury tragic situation. So we planned that it would be Wednesday the 30th of April and that day we all came out for the march. We agreed we were marching to the National Assembly. You might say why National Assembly first? Because that is the bastion of our democracy. It is the National Assembly that holds, at the very unit level of representation, that is where we are united. So we went and it was raining heavily. We simply said the children that had been taken we are not sure of what state they are in, so should rain therefore be a reason to back down? We said no. So we kept on with it and we marched to the National Assembly and the leadership of the National Assembly came out to meet with us and they stayed in the rain together with us and we laid our complaints and the chief complaint was, what is being done and why are we not being told that something is in fact being done? From that discussion they said they were going to have meeting with the President and that they were going to try and egg the prosecutors of our counter insurgency effort to come to a public hearing on what exactly is going on. We held them to their promise and went back to our place of gathering which is the Unity Fountain.
We had set out from the Unity Fountain. After meeting in the rain with the National Assembly we went back to the Unity Fountain and so we did a review of our engagement with the National Assembly and I asked the gathering ‘shall we now disperse? What would you want us to do? We are glad that you all came out and I said to them we have different options. We have the option of saying we have spoken to the National Assembly, therefore let us disperse and give them some days to get a feedback. We have the option of saying there are other entities we need to engage with. In addition, we have the option of saying we will be here daily and then be clearly seen by this community, this family because the community joined us on that 30th. The Chibok community, because their women had had a march on the 29th, the women of Chibok in Abuja had had a march on the 29th and ours was on the 30th. So when they heard of our march on the 30th, they actually came. So I asked that question and the crowd said ‘we want to be here daily until we know what is going on with our daughters. (Chuckles) That was how the Sit Out started to be a daily affair.
How will you react to the initial doubts on the abduction of the girls?
I don’t understand what has happened to us as people but I am encouraged by the fact that even if 99.9 per cent of us have become deadened in the way we reason about the things that affect our fellow human beings, some of us will not. Whether it was the parents crying that took the children or somebody else took the children the issue for us as a society is that we have lost some 200 or thereabout of our own children and I don’t need to even begin to wonder who is doing what? The issue is this: There were children and suddenly, we don’t have them. And in the society that I was raised, you don’t keep quiet when a thing like that happens. For me, I was not even interested in listening to that kind of wicked indifference to a situation that should challenge all of us. So, the people who had come out as the Abuja family for bring back our girls.
You see, by that 30th we already had our clarion call and BringBackOurGirls had taken hold of the social media. So, that is what we used as our campaign phrase for the Chibok girls. All the people were shocked that anybody was saying ‘eh, this is a scam!’ It was so terrible to imagine that even from quarters that you couldn’t believe that the doubt as to whether this was real or not real was pervasive. That made me understand the slowness in response to the fate of these girls. So because there was this institutional doubt as to the veracity of their abduction, nothing in terms of formidable, consistent, coherent, swift response was directed at their condition.
Have you established contact with all the parents of the abducted girls?
Not all the parents but I have sat with a number of the parents. Two of the girls that escaped, I have spent time with them. A number of uncles and aunties, we have spent time with them. The people of Chibok feel like the nation failed them. I mean, it is ‘our daughters are not with us. We sent our daughters to school…and by the way I have heard all kinds of stuff from the nay Sayers’ about the condition of these girls. Like people who say, ‘ok, how did one school register this number of children for school certificate exam? In the North how many people go to school that you will have this number?’ That is because they haven’t even paid serious attention. What had happened was that many schools joined together to make Chibok the centre for the WAEC examination. So it was not just the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, but about three other schools in the town brought candidates that were housed there for the exam. That is why you had that kind of a number. You hear things like ‘how over 200 girls were taken away by Boko Haram and nobody did anything?’ How did 300 people get slaughtered in some communities and nobody did anything equally? We need answers.
We as citizens are the ones who should be asking our own government the answers to these questions. I was shocked by the sheer scale of the children that were carted away and then when the Chibok families were speaking, some of them have said how when this whole thing started that these fellows had sent them a notice that they were coming. And they began to make calls. In fact, the Director of Defence Information, Major Gen. Chris Olukolade said that he got a call from somebody in Germany who was saying to him that one of their families in Chibok, had called to say they were under attack by Boko Haram. So, it just seemed to have been there that these people were under threat and they made those calls and yet the felons that took them were able to operate for the number of hours unchecked. Some of them said that the operation must have happened for about four hours. They said that the very thin security that they had was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the people who had come to carry the girls. So the whole town was just under the control of the insurgents, almost like an army of occupation. And these girls were the victims.
There is this insinuation that some people are so uncomfortable that you have been involved in this Bring Back Our Girls campaign and they are accusing some of you of trying to make political capital out of it and that you are being used by the opposition. What is your take on this?
Well I guess you should by now know Oby Ezekwesili. Who is it that would have made me their puppet? It is not possible! Look, those true to themselves, people who are true to themselves, they know that I am a person driven by conviction. I am known as the one who would say to my dad, ‘you have not done right.’ Who would say to my mum ‘I am sorry, you are not doing it right.’ That is the way I was brought up, that is the person that I am. In fact, let’s not even dignify that kind of a suggestion.
Haven’t you heard about being branded a mole?
I see all kinds of thrash that people put out there and I look at them and say the part of the reason I don’t have the moment to even laugh is that it is not even funny. Now this tells you part of the reason why these girls have been the victims of the kind of concerted action that should have been taken on their behalf. Oby Ezekwesili, is one person in the voice of many who looked at this situation and said this is not right. This cannot be going on. For goodness sake, if I have any political benefit of any kind or interest of any kind, you don’t think I would have already stated it? (Chuckles) I am fearless about these issues. So all of these people, you know they project you the way they think. No I don’t think like them. I’m sorry. For me this is a simple matter. Let me tell you where it really comes thick for me and it is personal for me. It is personal for me in the sense that I have devoted a lot of my life to being a mentor to younger women and I always say to younger women, when they say to me ‘Aunty Oby, I want to be like you.’ I say no, you can’t be like me. You have to be greater. You have to be better. If you are like me we haven’t made progress. I am older generation. So I inspire these young women to be great and I put a lot of emphasis on education. It was through education that my social and economic mobility happened. So, I said to myself, with what face would I tell another young girl child to do your best, you can be anything you wish to be? They would have every right to say to me, ‘But Aunty Oby, what did you do when they abducted 200 and something girls of my own generation? Were you not here? What did you do?’ I couldn’t live with the shame. A presidential aide actually directly attacked me and said that I was profiting from BringBackOurGirls. You know, it is not worthy of being dignified. I think that is all I would say.
Now Boko Haram came up with the option of swapping the girls for their members in custody. What is your take on this?
It is a bind. The government definitely finds itself in a bind in this kind of suggestion from a terrorist group. It is a bind. It is a tough bind. But it is not unusual with terrorists and kidnappers. They always give you options that are hard to work by. So there are different kinds of skill and expertise that exist around the world in how to engage. The most important thing is not to allow your result, which is to get the girls back alive, to be in any way imperiled by any step you will take. There has to be a way to keep an opening for ensuring the villains that abducted your girls don’t do anything. Then you work through a process, your target being that you will get your girls alive. But it is tough.
Do you support negotiation or the payment of ransom so that we can get our girls back?
I do not want to state a preference. All that I want to state is that there must be a conversation, a channel that would ensure that those girls are alive. In the business of trying to get a person held by terrorists, there are many countries that have done similar things and they have the expertise for getting back the person in many ways. There are certain things you cannot compromise. For example, you cannot compromise your whole criminal justice system just in a chip. You have to carry that at the back of your mind; your criminal justice system cannot be determined for you by terrorists. On the other hand, there has to be a way to stay engaged in order to ensure that your primary target, the girls that are being held captive wrongly, are kept alive and will keep that door open for their rescue.
What is your attitude to foreign assistance?
Terrorism is no longer a national problem especially when there are possibilities that the victims of terrorism are no longer within your national border. So it becomes regional, even a global issue. The impact of terrorism is such that the catch phrase now is that terror to one person is terror to all. And so, the idea that foreign assistance can support this process shouldn’t make us feel nervous. It is a matter of how we take ownership of the process of the rescue, organize those who are providing the support, because we know where the gaps have existed in terms of our own capacity. I keep making a distinction between two things. Our military is well capable but may not be well capacitated. So being capable is different from being capacitated. We must not act as though we were recipients of some sort; we must act as a sovereign country. There is nothing wrong with foreign assistance. Even the United States do receive support in their counter terrorism strategy.
Doesn’t it belittle us?
It doesn’t belittle us. Every country in Europe, in America, in Asia, they do receive support from each other in order to be effective in getting a handle on terrorism.
Both the Federal Government and the Borno State Government yesterday made an offer to rebuild the school when we have not located the abducted the girls. Are we not pushing the cart before the horse?
I am not against that, the reason that I am not against rebuilding of the school because this abduction of the girls is an assault on education. Indeed, they say it is Boko Haram that is their interest right? That western education is evil, or forbidden, and so by taking away all these girls, do you know we already have Chibok families that say ‘don’t even tell me to take my children to school.’ It is an assault on education and if you should assault education in this country. We already see what the disparity in well being in family income can be between those who have education and those who don’t have. A family without education is many times more probable to be poorer than a family with educated people. So we know that. We know that you stand at least three times the probability of being poor when you have a family without education compared to a family with education. We can’t afford it. Education is the path way to the greatness of all nations that we know. So, anyone that assaults education assaults the heart of our greatness and we shouldn’t in any way act to support that assault on education. So I am totally with the Federal Government and the State Government in the rebuilding of the school system and ensuring that education would continue to go on. The thing though is that one of the elements in our citizens solution is you must have a minimum standard of package of security to assure the safety of the school system because no parent would gladly let go off their children in an environment that is vulnerable to attack.
Now, why do you want to march on Aso Rock? Haven’t you made enough statements?
We had gone to the federal entities: The Chief of Defence Staff’s Team, the National Security Adviser’s Team; we have gone to the National Assembly; gone to Borno State Governor. We’ve heard quite a lot and one key thing that continues to worry everybody is the way that this country is so divided. The division runs so deep and unfortunately, a lot of the conversation that propels division is coming from all ends including our Presidency. Why should that be so? We want as citizens to go to our own President. He is our Commander-In-Chief. He is the one who should lead all of us to war against a common enemy. So the people said we must go to our President. In terms of the way Nigerians express it, we say he is the father of our country.
The Chibok Community for example has felt so bruised by the way this matter has been handled. Many times you’ve heard this community say we have been marginalized for so many decades and then this happened to us and nobody is concerned. They say it all the time that if it were not for the BringBackOurGirls campaign, nobody would have carried on with anything that concerns them. What a way to feel!
So we wrote to the President and said we want to come to meet with you, to lay on the table the kinds of grievances that people have and to learn from you based on the things that we have been told with the different visits we’ve done; to learn from you what you actually see as being the way that you conduct the affair of the Chibok girls going forward and to also pledge the full support of the citizens of Nigeria to you, that on this we have a common enemy. Anybody who has in any way being a part of the process of the abduction of these girls is our common enemy. You know I have heard things when they say ‘oh this is a plot by people who sat down and plotted. They just took those girls away so they can embarrass the President.’ I have heard that and I said to myself let us assume that these were true, we are common enemies to those people. But let’s first find the girls. Our interest is find those girls because government is the one with the monopoly of coercive apparatus. Individuals cannot find these girls. The parents cannot find these girls. It is the Federal Government that has the primary responsibility according to the Constitution. Chapter 2 of the Constitution states it clearly. The Federal Government has the primary responsibility for our security. Let’s find the girls. After we find the girls we as citizens are saying to you that whoever it was that did this is our common enemy. But let’s find the girls. Let’s stop all of this beating about the bush, this distraction, this diversion, while the lives of these girls hang in the balance. That is really what the point is.
Has the government replied you?
They didn’t reply. They didn’t reply. We….
Are you going ahead?
We are going ahead. We are going ahead. We are going to march on the Presidential Villa. We are hoping that between that the President as the one who understands what it means to respect the voice of citizens would see the benefit, would see the necessity to engage with his citizens. I mean, even our own nationals in other countries went to their leaders’ offices to say we want to speak about it. Even Americans went to raise the issue with their own President. So wouldn’t our own President see that his citizens are demanding that engagement. I think that anyone who cares about President Jonathan should be encouraging President Jonathan to listen to the voice and the demand of his citizens.
When will you visit Chibok?
Oh! Our plans for Chibok…
People say you are Abuja based, why?
No. No. We have our plans for Chibok. Our plans for Chibok is laid out. Didn’t you see our notice that we are going to Chibok? We put out a notice of our visit to Chibok way before there was this conversation about whether the President was going to Chibok or not going to Chibok. We had started our plans way earlier, so it is still there.
Don’t you fear for your life for being in this struggle? People assume this country has done so much for you but at this critical period instead of passing your views and suggestions to the government, you are the one moving against the system in one way or the other?
Does that narrative sound to you as being what this is about? If it is a narrative that you can identify with please let me know. It is a silly narrative. That is a very silly narrative. That is a narrative that takes Nigeria to the Stone Age. We can’t afford this kind of narrative. The narrative that I understand is the narrative that says to me that as a person who has been a beneficiary of a Nigerian society where I got public education, and was able to get to where I have gotten to in life, I must not turn my back when children like the girls of Chibok are going through a situation like this. And when the system that ought to respond to them does not respond to them as effectively as it should because of things that frankly don’t matter to the sanctity of the human, I must not in any way be complicit in that conspiracy of silence. That I must be a voice for the voiceless and that as many other people in this country as understand the basic value of common humanity, the value of empathy, need to rise and to say this is not us. This cannot be us.
Ma, ( cuts in)…
And for me, it so unfortunate how this government has created a narrative that suits what it wants to cast a person on. When I spoke concerning the poor management of oil revenue in this country, all they did was to attack me; all they did was to cast me as an opposition. It was strange because I wasn’t speaking about the issue on the basis of attack or opposition. I was simply giving my thoughts that I had expressed when as Vice President at the World Bank, Nigeria would come to meetings with me. In fact, the then Minister of Finance would come to meetings with me and we would discuss the fact that the management of oil revenue is key to the development of Nigeria and any poor management of it just slows the pace of that development.
When I came back, I continued to put emphasis on that issue. In my intellectual engagement with the graduating students of the University of Nigeria, I raised the issues as part of the discourse to say to the young graduates ‘that oil has been a source of sorrow for this country. This is the way you must engage analytically in understanding it so that your pathway for the development of the country would emphasize human capital. The speech was not directed at this government, it decided to do a narrative of its own. It has perennially tried to put a narrative to cast me in a particular way but I am not going to engage in that. I am not important. Not one bit. I don’t even understand why I am a person of interest to the administration. I don’t understand. I was asked to work, I refused to. I simply said thank you very much. I don’t want to. Why should I be a person of interest?
So, will you bow to pressure on this struggle to rescue the girls?
I have a voice. Nothing the administration does is going to smoulder my voice. I have a voice. I am a citizen with a voice. The Constitution guarantees me my voice. The greatest office in the land is not the Office of the President, the office of the National Assembly, the office of a Minister, it is actually the fact that the President, Ministers, Senators, members of the House of Representatives have an office called the Office of the Citizen. That is the office I also have. Just like you and every other person and every other person, we have that office. It is called the Office of the Citizen. I occupy that Office of the Citizen just like every other person. Nobody is going to determine how well I play my role as a citizen or otherwise. So, for anyone who gives you that kind of very slothful and silly narrative, please say to them that no, in fact, the more reason that I would engage in ensuring that the same society that enabled me to become great is not inimical to the girls from Chibok from becoming even greater.
Aren’t you a latter day activist as being insinuated against your person by sympathizers of the government?
I was reading something recently and they said there was something that those associated with the administration put out there, tissues of falsehood and lies against me. They said something like ‘she acquired money as Minister of Education to buy shares in Airtel.’ And I said how so totally illiterate. Buy shares in Airtel? I am not a director of Airtel by virtue of shares. I don’t own any shares in Airtel. This Airtel is a multinational company in many countries around the world. It is based out in India. Airtel invited me to come on the board as an independent director. The role of an independent director is given to you by virtue of your recognition as somebody who cares about matters of accountability, transparency and governance. Before I agreed to step on that board I know what I put them through to understand the level of their corporate governance and yet some illiterates in Nigeria are able to publish tissues of lies and then they tell all kinds of falsehood.
For example, I saw where they wrote, they said, that I acquired 10 choice properties in Abuja. One of my sons said ‘mum, and four of us have to live in one room?’ It is amazing! Tell them to try another lie. They should try another lie because on the matter of governance, I stand for the transparency and accountability.
Many of them have said things like she has become a latter day activist,. They haven’t even bothered to research into the background of the person they are talking about. Because if they did, they would know that I once led Concerned Professionals in this country on the streets advocating against military rule. That my being a co-founder of Transparency International was because I was an activist. Transparency International is in its 21st year. So I don’t understand where their history went to. So they are not dealing with somebody they can even try to cast anything on. But let them just find the girls, bring them back. Oby Ezekwesili is not your problem. I am not an issue. I am not important. Just bring back our girls. That’s all!
How do you feel that about 2.1billion people all over the world have joined this campaign?
I thank the people who have joined but it is the ultimate result that matters: BringBackOurGirls. Whoever it is that has joined, the most important is bring back our girls. I am not even spending a moment to think of how the campaign became what it became. No. Just bring back our girls. The ultimate result is these girls. I believe that these girls would become a symbol of what it takes to conquer oppression and repression and every kind of vicissitude to become great. Because I am banking on those girls that their greatness will inspire many other wounded women, people of their generation around the world. I am banking on that.
What lessons for Nigeria in all these after the rescue of the girls?
You know, one of the things that I said when we had meeting at the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and at the office of the Chief of Defence Staff is that ‘by the time all of these is said and done, you must do an operational review of our counter-insurgency strategy because when you do such an operational review, it would help you see where the gaps, the failures and the lapses happened. Use the Chibok case as your test case for doing a run through of your operational activities because if you spend your time now trying to say all these things you are saying, you are diverting the energy, distracting your focus on our single issue: BringBackOurGirls. I said to the crowd there that you may have every other issue, that is not our business right now. The only business we have is the fate of the Chibok girls.
It is complicated by the fact that you have this bizarre relationship between the Federal Government and Borno State Government. It is terrible that we can be one country and have such root of bitterness amongst ourselves. I mean, the children became the casualties of a broken federation, more or less. Speaking to the federal entities, you saw a painful depiction of the non-cooperation and non-collaboration of Borno State Government. We had a meeting with the Borno State Government and you saw exactly the same amount of bitterness directed at the Federal Government. For me as a citizen, I could not care less whether you are federal or you are state government you owe the citizens a clearly stated primary responsibility for the security of lives and property. Now the mechanisms through which you will do that is supposed to be driven by the Federal Government. So no matter what your personal issues may be, you have absolutely no right to use that personal quarrel, political quarrel, social quarrel, economic quarrel as a basis to be derelict in your duty and then jeopardize the security of citizens.
