The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Chibok girls

  • Guess what a Chibok girl parent told Jonathan?

    Guess what a Chibok girl parent told Jonathan?

    Add your comments on what you think parents of kidnapped Chibok girls told President Goodluck Jonathan during a meeting with him in Abuja on Tuesday.

     

    .

  • PHOTO: Chibok girls, parents in Aso Rock

    PHOTO: Chibok girls, parents in Aso Rock

  • Jonathan meets Chibok girls’ parents Tuesday

    President Goodluck Jonathan will on Tuesday meet with some parents of the over 200 secondary school girls abducted in Chibok, Borno State in April 14.

    Also expected to be at the meeting billed for the Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja, are some of the schoolgirls that escaped from the terrorists.

    The Pakistani Girl-Child Education Campaigner, Malala Yousafzai, had urged President Jonathan to meet the parents when she met him last week Monday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    An earlier meeting with the parents scheduled for last week Tuesday did not hold as they were said to have left for Borno State.

  • Chibok Girls: Let’s go spiritual

    SIR: Nigerians, faced with a series of unbroken life difficulties tend to affiliate his “hell on earth” with spiritualism. As the popular adage says, heaven only helps those who help themselves.

    It seems about time that aspect of our lifestyle is put to urgent use. This is the time for the nation to ask for the help of our spiritual leaders (the jet flyers and those without). Given the complexity of Boko Haram insurgency and the rate at which it is getting out of governmental control, the presidency should not shy away from holding an expanded security advisory meeting comprising not just the governors but also the spiritual crème de la crème.

    Let us call on the priests of divinity, to divine our collective future as well as those of the abducted ladies. The priests of the Pentecostal and orthodox churches should not be left out of this; so also are the imams, to help us pray our way out of this calamity.

    It’s not a mockery of the situation, but something we needed to do but had looked at, with negligence.  After all, an average Nigerian and even many of the mediocres in public offices are always rushing to these spiritual centres for political breakthroughs during electioneering.

    Spiritualism is not all of the panacea but just one of them. The “men of God” should also be begged into negotiating for the release of these abducted girls, granting their closeness with God or divinity, so that the heart of the Boko Haram boys would be softened and an unconditional release without bloodshed or casualty on the part of the abductees achieved.

    While all these is on, it’s high time we accepted that though our armed forces are doing their best, the numerical and physical strength of our military do not meet the technological and intelligential demands for tackling a hit and run insurgency like Boko Haram. And also the patriotic motivation of our military does not meet the “readiness to die, but not die alone” will of the Boko Haram goons.

    If motivation is to be termed, dying for what  one believes in, then no army in the world not even the America’s, has a higher motivation than that of the die-hard terrorist. The Boko Haram goons are ready to die for a cause -even though a regrettably erroneous one- and to our spiritual leaders we should be turning our attention to, for spiritual breakthrough, as every contemporary Nigerian does.

    They mustn’t reject us in this dire time, after all many of them had made  wealth and fame from a whole lot of us, who jostle to their centres and strive through our nose to add up to the collection box, in the name of breakthrough and miracles.

     

    •Waliu Olaifa,

    olaifawaliu@rocketmail.com

  • Jonathan, Malala and Chibok girls

    Jonathan, Malala and Chibok girls

    Newspapers missed both the strident tone and essence of the message Malala Yousafzai passed on to President Goodluck Jonathan during her visit last Monday. The Pakistani girls’ education advocate was in Nigeria for a two-day visit to further her global campaign, advocate urgent efforts to rescue the 219 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants, and ask the president to meet with the anguished parents of the abducted girls. She, however, managed in the process to lecture the president in surprisingly severe tones on his duties and responsibilities to his country and the girls in particular. Somehow, everyone seemed to have focused on her reprise of the discussions she had with the president, during which she donated $200,000 to girls’ education in Nigeria.

    Immediately after Malala met with the president, Dr Jonathan extended an invitation to the Chibok parents who had travelled to Abuja to meet the girls’ education advocate. But this invitation immediately became controversial because the Chibok parents declined to meet with the president due to extenuating circumstances. Prickly presidency spokespersons however misconstrued this snub as a plot by opposition forces who it claimed had hijacked the BringBackOurGirls protest. But it turned out that the few parents in question needed time to receive a fresh mandate from other Chibok parents to meet with the president. The meeting, it now seems, has been rescheduled.

    Two major issues come out of the Malala meeting with Dr Jonathan. First is the unfortunate fact, already highlighted in the ongoing controversy surrounding the presidential audience granted the girls’ education advocate, that it took Malala’s visit for the president to appreciate his obligation to meet with the Chibok parents. Second is the even sadder fact that the president does not appear to appreciate the irony, if not irresponsibility, of asking to meet a few of the parents in Abuja. Does he think a crash meeting in Abuja would obviate the need for him to visit Chibok? And does he hope that such a meeting, if it takes place, would atone for his unstatesmanlike behavior in abandoning Chibok?

    At the time of this writing, the Chibok parents do not appear to mind visiting the president in his office. But unlike the president, they give indication they know it is wrong to meet anywhere else but in Chibok. The Chibok parents travel to and fro Chibok, with all the security issues surrounding the trips. Why has it been impossible for the president to plan even a one-hour visit to the troubled town? The Chibok parents may be ashamed for the president and might honour his invitation, but they really do not owe him any obligation to save him from the global embarrassment of failing to visit the town, like any president would have done.

    More and more, Dr Jonathan proves himself unworthy of the country he presides over. First he didn’t believe there was any abduction, as if Boko Haram gave him the impression the sect was incapable of such overwhelming monstrosity. Then he rules out a swap arrangement to free the girls without replacing that option with anything tangible. Furthermore, citing security concerns, he has refused to visit the town or the anguished parents of the schoolgirls, and did not think it fit to invite those parents until Malala emotionally and almost disrespectfully spoke with him. Finally, he has started to blame his failure and negligence on the opposition, even as he plans four more undeserving years in office. But four more years of what?

  • Church prays for release of Chibok girls

    Members of Pray Through Church of God, Sango-Ota, Ogun State last Sunday interceded for the safe return of over 200 Chibok girls still in abduction.

    The prayer session was the climax of activities marking the fourth anniversary of the church.

    The theme of the anniversary was God of speedy promotion.

    Members raised their voices in agony, invoking angels to orchestrate the release of the girls in abduction for over three months.

    The general overseer of the church, Pastor Taiwo Ayeni, led the prayer session.

    He said: “I know that His angels are already at work in Sambisa forest or wherever the children are being held.”

    Delivering a sermon at the anniversary, Pastor Victor Odigie from Christ Living Spring Apostolic Ministry (CLAM), canvassed for prayers to overcome the challenges of life.

  • APC: Jonathan embarrassed Nigeria over Chibok girls

    APC: Jonathan embarrassed Nigeria over Chibok girls

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said it was a compound embarrassment that it took 17-year-old Pakistani girl-child education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai, to visit and convince President Goodluck Jonathan to agree to a meeting with representatives of the parents of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls.

    The party faulted the Presidency for blaming the opposition for the failure of Jonathan’s planned parley with the abducted girls’ parents.

    In a statement yesterday in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, APC said: “President Jonathan, who has already embarrassed himself and the people of Nigeria by his inexplicable failure to visit Chibok since the girls were abducted over 90 days ago, has compounded the embarrassment and insulted Nigerians by waiting for Malala to goad him to meet with the girls’ parents, not in Chibok but in Abuja.”

    It said after the meeting failed, because the parents were not properly informed and invited, the Presidency blamed the opposition and patriotic Nigerians, who have been campaigning daily under the #BringBackOurGirls group.

    APC said: “Fortunately, and to the eternal discomfiture of the Presidency, the Chibok community has said the decision not to meet with President Jonathan in Abuja was theirs and theirs alone. The parents said they took that decision because their sole reason for coming to Abuja was to meet with Malala, and not the President, who did not invite them anyway.

    “With this explanation, one would have expected a Presidency that has regard for the truth to immediately retract its earlier panic statement, which it issued to save face, after what was nothing but a Public Relations (PR) gimmick, blew up in its face, and apologise to the opposition and the #BringBackOurGirls group that were unjustly pilloried by them.

    “Instead, the Presidency has persisted in its distortion of the truth, for which it has now become infamous, even as a new date has been agreed for the meeting. This is unfortunate, condemnable and irresponsible.

    “If indeed, as the Presidency claimed earlier, that the opposition was behind the refusal by the parents and escaped girls not to see the President, what has then happened to make them change their minds? Has the opposition now asked them to meet with the President?”

    The party told Nigerians that the reason Jonathan, whose wife bullied and harangued the girls’ parents that they were lying and that no girl was missing, agreed to meet with the parents was to use the meeting as a photo-op, after Malala pushed for it and the President’s United States-based image laundering firm acceded to it.

    APC added: “Mr. President, your frantic effort to meet with the Chibok parents now is too little too late, and no amount of photo-op will change that. If your handlers had been sincere, they would have told you that the best venue of the meeting is Chibok, not Abuja where your people tried, but failed, to waylay the parents who came for a meeting with Malala.

    “Mr. President, you have ceaselessly compared yourself to the great leaders of our time, including U.S President Barack Obama. But do you think Obama would have refused to visit the parents of these abducted schoolgirls, if the abduction had occurred in the U.S? Do you think Obama, as commander-in-chief, would have refused to visit his troops in the front line of the anti-terror fight, as you have done?

    “Do you think, Mr. President, that a band of rogue elements, like Boko Haram, would have restricted Obama’s movement within his own country, as they have done to you? No true and caring President will ever fail to visit the sites of disasters and offer solace to his compatriots.”

    The party reminded Jonathan that neither in Nigeria’s culture nor in any other cultures are those hit by tragedy invited to be offered solace.

    It added that the practice is to visit those to be offered solace “in situ”.

    APC reiterated its earlier call that the President should shake off his lethargy and bring the abducted schoolgirls home safely, instead of playing politics with the lives of over 200 human beings.

  • Chibok girls’ parents: we never requested to visit Aso Villa

    Chibok girls’ parents: we never requested to visit Aso Villa

    Representatives of the Chibok community in Abuja have said the 12 fathers and five girls who spoke with Pakistani girl-child education activist Malala Yousafzai never requested to meet with President Goodluck Jonathan or any government official.

    The Borno State indigenes said they only received the invitation to meet with the President yesterday after the girls and the parents had returned to Chibok.

    The parents were said to have been invited through a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Chibok community in Abuja, signed by the Chief of Staff to the President.

    The community described as “unfounded” the Presidency’s accusation that the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners discouraged the parents from meeting with the President.

    A statement yesterday in Abuja by the Abuja Chibok Community spokesman Dauda Iliya, said: “These parents and escaped girls did not come to Abuja at the instance of government or its representatives for a meeting with Mr. President but on the full understanding that they were coming to meet with Malala, an advocate of girl-child education and, most importantly, one who has suffered a similar fate as their daughters.

    “In the course of their interactions with Malala, neither the parents nor the escaped girls asked for a meeting with the President or any government functionary. Rather, the narrative back home was to persistently ask why the President had not visited them in Chibok since the abduction.

    “It is obvious that 12 fathers and five girls only constitute about two per cent of the parents of the abducted schoolgirls and the 57 girls that escaped. Therefore, the parents decided on their own to review the announced visit, which they first heard of, like every other person, during Malala’s speech.

    “This resulted in their decision to revert to other family members to incorporate every stakeholder on the matter as well as avoid discord and suspicion on the change of plans from the original mission to Abuja. They reached out to the Malala team and, through them, to the Presidency, to request for a new date for an expanded and more representative meeting …to meet with the President.

    “Their request is also in recognition of the huge opportunity of a meeting with the President for the first time, after over 90 days of the tragic abduction.

    “…The community, therefore, required better consultations, structure and formality, as against an instant advocacy request.

    “It is totally misleading, unjust and without foundation to hold the citizens’ platform #BringBackOurGirls or any individual responsible for the decision made by the 12 parents and our community. We, therefore, take full responsibility for our decision and welcome the formal invitation by the President as a follow-up to the Malala’s visit which we received this morning.”

  • Chibok girls inside and outside Sambisa forest (2)

    •Continued from last week

    Inside the forest

    It is from the few Chibok girls who have escaped and from other escapee women abducted before or after them that we obtain faint picture of goings-on in the forest. It is some of these stories which keep my head awake at night when certain events, such as rainfall, a stormy wind or cold bring their plight back to my memory.

    •One of the girls said she was raped by seven men in one day and then tied to a tree, hands and legs, for three days. An escaping abducted boy freed her and another girl tied to a tree beside her.

    •Another girl said 15 men raped her in one day.

    •Another girl said they had no beds and slept on leaves-covered earth. Whenever the American drome airplane was sighted, trying to map their location, the girls were instructed to lie on the forest floor and cover themselves with green foliage to avoid detection. Disobedience could bring death.

    •One Christian girl who bluntly refused to recite the Koran was buried alive in a pit saves for her head. As a warning to other girls, the victims head was bombarded with a hail of stones until she died.

    •Another captive said she and seven other women abducted before the Chibok girls bore children for the leader of the Boko Haram in the forest, Shekau, when she escaped and got home with her own child, her family was unkind and unwelcoming, contrary to her expectation. Her family saw the child as a satanic child and did not want him around them. As a mother, she couldn’t throw her baby away.

    There is no doubt that many, if not all of the women have been sexually brutalised. That is the hallmark of soldiers under tension. When they take a town during war, some of them go looting while others go after the women. Some women get pregnant in the process. It surprises many men, not women that such pregnant women keep their babies. That is the maternal instinct at work. The baby grew in the woman, giving her a new experience of life as mother, not in a man. I remember a diplomatic row between Britain and a North African Arab country, I suspect was Morocco in the 1970s or 1980s. An Arab couple raised their two daughters born in Britain to adolescence but did not want them to marry British boys. They arranged a home going holiday after pre-arranging husbands for these girls back home. The couple sneaked back to Britain leaving their daughters behind. Next day, the village chief summoned the girls and introduced their husbands to them. It was a harrowing experience for these girls. After about four years, British journalist on their trail, following newspaper reports instigated by the friends of these girls, found them in a mountain range. Britain demanded their release since they were British citizens. But the Arab government would let go only if the girls left their children behind.

    Meanwhile, each of these girls had had two children in their forced marriages. The girls agreed to stay with their husband and children. Thus, their lives would change forever!

    The girls and women in Sambisa Forest are not different. I always imagine how terrified they would have looked on finding themselves in a forest, and when the men made for them. Some would have fought back and be killed. Others would have cried and cried after the first man came, and cried still when more men came in a seemingly endless row.

    Why me?

    In the hearts of these girls, many serious questions of life or existence will rage. So will they in their parents’. These questions will include: why is this happening to me? Does God exist? Why does he allow all these atrocities, if He does and he is love? Today is not the time to address these questions and more. Today, we must chase away the fox. On the morrow, we rebuke the chicken. Suffice it, however, to say today that God is perfection and Justice. Nothing happens by accident. We wonder why certain events occur only because we view a short span of our existence. Today, we reap the harvest of seeds sown yesterday.  Nature is a theatre of warfare where “carelessness avenges itself bitterly”. If security warnings were heeded, and these girls missed their examination for one year, it is possible they would not be captives in a forest of horror today, abused by savage men and dehumanised. Who knows, what will be, will be! And this will lead us back to the role of our “yesterday” in our lives “today. Yesterday, in this context, will include previous earth lives. Of previous lives, the Bible is rich in instructive beacons despite the attempts of Emperor Justinian at the Bishops Conference of Constantinople in AD 553 to expunge belief and teachings about re-incarnation from this Christian reference book. We still hear of ‘I knew thee before I formed thee in thy mother’s womb”, of Prophet Elijah returning to this earth before the birth of Jesus Christ. Today, the heart is sore. Nevertheless, we must give God the honour of perfection to be able to find answers to question of…’why me’ which will be well addressed some day. For perfection in this regard means our experiences have to be what they are because of certain reasons which we can then seek to discover.

    An unfeeling nation

    Nigeria roars only when experience or memory is fresh. Today, the thieves, thugs and killers of yesterday are returning to power everywhere. A few months ago, Nigeria was filled with shouts of Bring Back Our Girls. Today, many people would appear to have forgotten about them. “you are on your own”, we often hear. Even the government would appear not to be interested in their future. What I had thought would have happened, even as these girls escape from the forest in ones and twos is that the governors of their states, their Christian leaders and the President will receive them and their folks in audience to publicly sympathise with them and to salute their courage. Wouldn’t the President have received the Super  Eagles at the Presidential Villa if they won the World Cup? Following tradition, wouldn’t he have drowned them with cash? Couldn’t the government have thought of a rehabilitation programme for these girls. This rehabilitation could have involved sending them to special trauma centres abroad which can help them out of dehumanising memories of life in Sambisa forest oh no, Nigeria has no time for such matters. Rather, we play football with Iran in the World Cup. It has been forgotten Iran trained the Nigerian whiz kids of Boko Haram. It has been forgotten, too, that an Iranian escorted a ship load of arms for Boko Haram to Lagos Ports. In the days of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa in the First Republic, Nigeria would have long broken diplomatic relations with Iran for these unfriendly acts. We are a cold, unfeeling nation where easyone is on his own.

    Soon, we may witness this as the 2015 general elections draw near. I suspect Boko Haram sponsors, handlers and foot soldiers will be granted state pardon, and the treasury key will be given to them by way of “compensation” they are demanding for unleasing homendous mass murder on the nation. In the talks that would follow, they would demand key cabinet positions in the next government. All these may be conceded to them in exchange for a second term PDP ticket for President Ebele Jonathan. Before then, James Ibori would be brought home to complete his prison term in Nigeria. As he is doing so, he would be granted State pardon so he can contribute his quota to the President’s re-election. The girls would have been traded in and so would have been all the people Boko Haram has murdered in cold blood. The lesson would be simple for all to read.

    In Nigeria, you are on your own. Are Chibok girls and their parents listening? Brave girls! More than 60 of them escaped from the forest of horror last weekend. Suspecting that Boko Haram may be losing steam, Emurs immediately asked the Sultan of Sokoto to meet them to discuss ceasefire. The terms, of course, would include amnesty and compensation. President Jonathan may budge if the settlement involves second term ticket. In that case, there may be no need to bare the fangs of the Army which, currently is enlarging. Chibok girls, in or out of the forest, you are on your own!

  • Paediatricians want Chibok girls back

    HE Paediatic Association of Nigeria (PAN) has  appealed to the abductors of the Chibok girls to release them  so that they can re-unite with their parents.

    According to the association, the continued detention of the remaining 219 girls  is a cause of great concern to it as an ssociation.

    In a statement made available to The Nation and signed by its President, Prof Adebiyi Olowu and National Secretary, Jerome Elusiyan, the harrowing experience the girls are being subjected to in the past two months is beyond imagination.

    “The health needs of these adolescent girls- physical, mental and psychological – could hardly be met outside their natural homes. The effects of the psychological abuse already suffered by these innocent girls may last longer than the duration of their abduction and indeed their families share in the extreme impact of the pains of this terrorist act. Paediatricians across the country commiserate with the parents, family and friends of these children,” they stated.

    The association said it joined other well-meaning Nigerians to appeal to the government to take the release of these girls as topmost priority to prevent further deterioration of their health. While it appreciates the efforts of government so far, they said the safe release of all the girls will be the only yardstick of a successful effort.