#BringBackOurGirls: 100 Days After, Chibok Girls Still In Captivity

By Simon Ateba

Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, finally met with some parents of the Chibok girls on Tuesday, 99 days after their daughters were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Borno State. Today marks the 100th day since the mass abduction of over 200 girls, which has horrified millions of people around world.

Tuesday’s meeting came after Jonathan, 56, heeded the advice of 17-year old Pakistani girl-child education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai. The teenager last week urged Jonathan to meet with the distraught parents and intensify efforts to rescue the abducted girls from the deadly hands of Boko Haram.

The meeting, which took place inside the Banquet Room of the Presidential Villa, was attended by President Jonathan, President of the Senate, David Mark, Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, his counterpart in Bauchi, Isa Yuguda, members of the Federal Executive Council, security chiefs, community leaders and others, including the principal of the Government Secondary School, Chibok.

In all, about 200 people from Chibok, including 51 of the 57 girls who escaped, their parents, and relatives of the missing ones were at the meeting. Four luxury buses belonging to the Abuja Urban Mass Transport Company Limited conveyed them to the presidential villa, and took them back to the Nicon Hotel amid tight security provided by a combined team of the State Security Service (SSS) and mobile policemen.

A hurriedly scheduled meeting last week Tuesday between Jonathan and the parents did not hold. While the presidency blamed it on the main opposition, All Progressives Congress. Sources said the parents did not show up in protest. Many parents wondered why it took the president more than three months and the advice of a teen to see it necessary to meet with them.

Those who attended yesterday’s meeting said it was heart-wrenching and tears flew abundantly from some of the escaped girls and parents of the missing ones.

Although journalists were barred from the gathering, The Punch newspaper, quoting a source in attendance, said many shed tears as the girls began narrating their harrowing experiences in the hands of the terrorists. The source said the girls pleaded with Jonathan to intensify efforts and ensure the girls are rescued alive and on time.

The source was quoted as saying: “The girls narrated how they jumped out of moving vehicles on the night of their abduction. They said they ran into the bush without any knowledge of where they were and where they were heading for.

“The girls said they trekked cautiously inside the thick bush up until daybreak before they saw some Fulani men who offered to assist them because they were still in their school uniforms. They said they were moved on motorcycles by the Fulani men who assisted them.”

The source said four other girls also told the President that they escaped when they went to fetch water from a stream. The four girls said they were five when they escaped but could not locate the other girl who fled in another direction.

“They told the President that they managed to escape when they went to fetch water from a stream. They said they were being guided by two men, that at a point, five of them managed to escape. Four of them went in the same direction while one went in another direction. They do not know the whereabouts of the fifth girl who went in another direction,” The Punch quoted the source as saying.

The Islamist sect has since converted the other girls in their custody to Islam. A video made available to AFP on 12 May 2014 showed over 100 girls reading the Quran. In the video, Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, said that two of the girls were killed by snake bites.

Reuben Abati, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, who later briefed State House correspondents, said the President had first-hand information from the girls and their parents.

“The girls spoke in great details about their experiences and their observations. It was an open and frank session in which everybody expressed their minds,” he said.

Abati later issued a statement, saying that Jonathan’s desire was to visit Chibok after the abducted girls might have been rescued.

He said Jonathan believes that it is only then that the parents of the girls could receive him with smiling faces rather than with tears, adding that, Jonathan told the distraught parents that he is with them in thoughts even though he has not visited their community, more than three months after the girls were kidnapped.

The girls were kidnapped on 14 April, when over 200 girls were abducted as they slept in their school dormitories in Chibok, a rural area, 130 kilometres from Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Borno. The remote capital is about 845 kilometres from Abuja, the Nigerian seat of power.

While 57 girls have so far escaped or released, others remain in custody of the insurgents, who threatened to sell them into slavery or marry them off, unless the government swapped them with his comrades detained all over the country.

But the government rejected the offer, saying that it does not negotiate with terrorists, especially a faceless group like Boko Haram. Since then, the sect has launched more deadly attacks and has kidnapped more women in northern Nigeria.

The whereabouts of the girls have remained unknown and repeated claims by the military or government officials that the girls have been located and would soon be released are no more taken seriously by many Nigerians who gradually regard their military as feckless and corrupt with money given to them to fight the insurgents diverted into private pockets as revealed by American officials in May and June this year.

Calls by many Nigerians to President Jonathan to visit Chibok where the girls were kidnapped have fallen on death ears and a planned visit sometime in May was called off at the last minute.

The inability of Jonathan to visit Chibok and utterances by the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, shortly after the kidnap, have made many to conclude that the president and his administration are not seriously enough about the rescue operation.

After the girls were kidnapped, the presidency at first believed it was a hoax, according to some inside source. President Jonathan was berated for not even acknowledging and mentioning the horrific incident in public until after three weeks. By that time, the social media platforms, especially twitter, were awash with the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

The mass abduction and the poor government response horrified millions of people around the world, including celebrities such as Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie. From New York to London to South Africa and in virtually all big cities around the world, protesters stormed streets, held placards and called on Boko Haram to release the girls.

The protesters blasted Jonathan for his poor response and urged the government to intensify action to bring the girls back home and alive. Foreign nations such as the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and China, as well as neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, promised military assistance.

Since then, US drones and other planes have been flying over the Sambisa forest, where the girls are believed to be held, and Cameroon has deployed over a thousand soldiers to its border with Nigeria in an attempt to suffocate the sect.

The United Nations has also designated Boko Haram a terrorist organisation and millions of dollars are up for grabs for anyone who can provide useful information about the whereabouts of Shekau, the Boko Haram leader.

But despite these efforts, and repeated claims by the Nigerian military and government officials that the girls have been located, they are yet to be rescued; 100 days after the shocking incident took place.