Nearly ten years have passed since that dark day in April 2014 when fighters from the terrorist Boko Haram group lighted on a government secondary school in Chibok, a small town in Borno State, and kidnapped 287 hapless schoolgirls. Some escaped captivity by their own devices, others as a result of the efforts of civil society groups.
An indeterminate number remain in capacity either as wives or sex slaves of the fighters of this extremist group, and yet many others succumbed to death in the course of their harrowing experiences.
Until the Chibok girls episode the phenomenon of mass abductions was relatively unknown – even in the North – which now appears to be the main theatre for its manifestation. That was the reason, perhaps, why the government of then President Goodluck Jonathan, received initial reports of the kidnapping with much skepticism.
The then governor of Borno, now Vice President, Kashim Shettima, was hauled into Aso Rock for a grilling as to how it was possible for a ragtag bunch of thugs to march in and spirit away almost three hundred girls with such ease. Poor guy, though he was governor and supposedly chief security officer of his state, he didn’t really control troops and had little say in their deployment.
Such was the suspicion that the incident was just political mischief to embarrass the government of the day that then First Lady Patience Jonathan got in on the act and convened her own panel of inquiry to get to the root of the matter. The result was a comic, shambolic affair that end with her famously wailing in frustration “there’s God o!”
Unfortunately for Mrs. Jonathan and the rest of Nigeria, those who engineer and execute mass abductions of vulnerable people don’t dread or regard the God she was drawing their attention to.
Abubakar Shekau, the late, unlamented monster who controlled Boko Haram, would confirm the reality of the kidnapping shortly after through several propaganda videos with the largely Christian girls now wrapped up in the Muslim hijab. His maniacal laughter taunting the authorities to come and get the girls if they could was national humiliation.
The motive of Shekau and his goons in pulling off their crime was to advertise their extreme ideology to a global audience that hardly paid attention to them. After Chibok, the world knew the name Boko Haram.
The Jonathan administration’s inability to bring back the girls, or to rein in a campaign of terror unleashed across the North by the extremists, was part of the contributory factors that defined it as weak and clueless. It would pay the price at the 2015 presidential elections.
The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) which had done an excellent job of defining the then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government as inept, soon inherited the headache. Back then, the ruling party encouraged the insinuation that the opposition were complicit in the Chibok kidnapping and other terror acts as it would help them politically.
After taking power in 2015, the best efforts of the Muhammadu Buhari administration still didn’t bring the girls home. If the dark suggestions of his political rivals had really been true, then it would have been relatively easy to organise their return and repeat a massive harvest of goodwill. That didn’t happen. Not long after, those who were accused of knowing about the Chibok incident soon found themselves having to deal with another mass abduction – this time on their watch.
In February 2018, a faction of Boko Haram stormed into a girls’ science school in Dapchi, a town in Yobe State and captured 110 girls. Almost all would be released not longer after, less five who lost their lives in this episode.
In mid-December 2020, gunmen riding on motorcycles arrived another secondary school in Kankara, Katsina State and seized 300 boys. The state government went into negotiations and six days later their release was announced.
Six years after Shekau’s goons plucked the Chibok girls from their hostels, it was evident that the nature of mass abductions in the North had changed. There was now clearly an economic motive given the swift manner in which the crisis was resolved after negotiations. No doubt, ransom had changed hands – never mind what the authorities said in public.
From February 2021 to July of the same year, a slew of mass kidnappings would happen across three Northern states that left the Federal Government and myriad security agencies looking helpless. On February 17, gunmen wearing military fatigues visited the science school in Kagara, Niger State and abducted 27 students and three teachers.
Nine days later there was a nighttime attack on a boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara State, with 300 schoolgirls taken captive. A few weeks after, all were released after money exchanged hands. In March 2021, 39 students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation at Afaka, Kaduna State, was kidnapped, only to be freed in batches in April and May. In the same state, armed men visited the private Greenfield University and took away 20 students.
More trauma was in the offing when in April bandits stormed into the Bethel Baptist High School in Chikun area of Kaduna State and took 100 students. They would later be freed in batches after the payment of ransom by parents and the church. When a particular security agency tried to claim credit for the release of the initial batch of abductees, irritated parents shut them up by revealing the mind boggling sums that had been paid for their freedom.
In the last two to three years, it seemed like the criminals had lost appetite for their evil enterprise. Not so. They are back with a vengeance. On March 7 this year, the usual suspects raided a school in Kuriga, Kaduna State and seized 287 pupils who they are still holding. They have asked for N1 billion to set their captives free; a demand that has been rebuffed by President Bola Tinubu.
The same questions that people asked ten years ago are still relevant today. How is possible for gunmen to move hundreds of children on motorcycles with no one being any wiser? Didn’t this raucous procession pass through any community? On tarred roads such movement would be a logistical nightmare; in the forest it would be no easy undertaking.
In an age where the skies have technological eyes, it is easy for security agencies to identify the location of the kidnappers. That not much has been done with the information they have is down to the fact that the kidnappers use their victims as human shields. Unfortunately, knowing this is cold comfort for parents and the authorities who are under pressure to rescue the abducted.
A reckless military action might destroy both captor and victims and generate even worse outrage than doing nothing. The recent incident of error bombing in Kaduna State showed how difficult things can become in such circumstances.
While it is possible to sympathise with the authorities, things cannot continue this way. Yes, they are under pressure to act. But make no mistake about it, the kidnappers are also under pressure to resolve things. It cannot be a tea party having to mind 287 little children in the middle of nowhere.
The first step towards ending the menace of mass abductions is to refuse to pay up. Take away the economic incentive and the monster will begin to die. The business is alive and well because it is yielding profit for its perpetrators. Tinubu must hold firm on not paying ransom or his administration would end up infusing the monster it wants dead.
Secondly, the public must be prepared for the fact that the stand-off cannot last forever. At some point government would have to intervene forcefully if it is going to be any different from its predecessors. As often happens in these circumstances, there could, unfortunately, be loss of lives. But mass kidnapping would only decline when people realize they would pay a steep price for abductions.
Lastly, the question must also asked as to how much communities are committed to frustrating this phenomenon. Criminals hide victims in their midst and in nearby forests – not in thin air. They can provide intelligence that would be useful to the authorities. But how much cooperation are they offering to those they want to deliver them?
How much are elite Northern voices speaking out to denounce the evil of mass abductions? Not much, I would say. Instead, we have the likes of Sheikh Gumi making a case for dialoguing with bandits as though they’ve become a fact of our lives we much live it. An end must come to indulging evil.
