Nigerians task Buhari on Chibok girls
A cross section of those who spoke to Daily Sun want the incoming government of President-elect, General Muhamadu Buhari, to make their release top priority just as they urge the military to do more to spare the country the distress and tackle the Boko Haram insurgency.
Finding Chibok girls must be Buhari’s priority –Professor Is-shaq Akintola, Director, Muslim Rights Concern and Lecturer, Lagos State University, Ojo
As it stands now, Nigerians are unanimously yearning for the release of those poor girls that were cruelly adopted from their school at Chibok. We want to see them back home safe and alive.
It was unfortunate that the President Goodluck Jonathan administration was too lackadaisical to the fate of those girls. That was contrary to the mandate given to him in 2011 election to ensure the safety and protection of all Nigerians.
Now the reality is that one year after, our hearts are still with those girls, their parents and families. As parents, we feel their pains and sorrow. In fact, one needs to be a parent to know how it feels.
On account of this, we are appealing to the incoming government of General Muhammadu Buhari to do everything he can to see that those girls are located alive and returned to their parents. Everything must be done to realise this and ensure that the pains of the parents are alleviated.
Beside that, he has to ensure that this wave of insurgency in the country is tackled with all the seriousness it deserves.
Yes, people might want to say that the Chibok girls’ saga was politicised. But the truth is that there is politics everywhere. Women play politics in their kitchen. Heads of families also play politics in their homes.
So the issue is that there is politics everywhere. And in this issue of the Chibok girls, it is normal to see it politicised. Of course, that has to be when you imagine that over 250 girls were brazening taken away and nobody seemed to be caring. Whoever says that Nigerians were unkind to the present administration over the missing girls is being unkind.
Come to think about it, did President Jonathan not play politics with the girls? Initially, he said he didn’t believe that the girls were missing. He said the opposition was playing politics with the issue. It took quite a long while before he could come to terms with that fact and take action. To say that the issue was politicised therefore is true. But the issue is that it is when an issue such as that comes up that we know whether a government is serious or not.
Chibok girls saga still a show of shame –Monsignor Gabriel Osu, Director of Communications, Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos.
To tell you the truth, the issue of the missing Chibok girls has remained a show of shame. It is a big shame that such a large number of girls are still missing and there is still no clue as to their whereabouts.
However, I remain optimistic that the girls will still be found. We don’t have to lose hope.
However, the fact that the girls have not been found one year after is an embarrassment to the military and to the country. I feel sick and sad about this. I can imagine what is going on in the minds of the parents and members of families of the girls who were adopted.
One has to urge all those campaigning for the release of the girls not to drop their guards after the elections. They should be doing their level best, same for the military and the intelligence service. Everyone should be working to realise the release of those girls. I don’t want to be negative; I hope that the situation would be turned around.
I believe that the incoming government of General Muhamadu Buhari has the Chibok girls’ saga as its liability. Since it knows that well over 200 girls are still in captivity, it might not go to sleep. It should not be quiet about that because human beings are involved. Therefore, consensus effort would be made and that is why the issue has to be a priority to the government.
For the Borno State government, this should a priority too. Unfortunately, the state government didn’t start the rescue push in time. It allowed some laxity to creep in. That should not be this time round. The government ought to continue with its efforts to ensure that the girls are found.
In all that everyone is doing, consideration ought to be given to the sorrow, the bitterness and tears of the parents of the girls. Naturally those parents are angry; they are bitter. And this is natural considering what it takes for one to lose a son or daughter. I expect that they will be angry with the government of the day. They will be angry with the institution. We don’t need anyone to tell us that. So the parents want to see the end of this problem and that is where and why our prayers go with them.
To forestall this happening again in the future, our security operatives now need to be on the alert always. If they were on the alert, probably the situation might not have been what it is now. The situation might not have been that bad. But then, there was probably no communication among the security operatives and the authorities too were too passive. And now to prevent a repeat of this phenomenon, we want to see the security agencies deploy more modern means of communication and even the social media.
Of course, we are not forgetting the fact that our borders are too porous. If it was not so, we would have known when the insurgent were taking the girls probably across the borders. We could have received some alert.
This problem is a tumour in our national life –Dr Oghenekaro Ogbinaka, former Chairman, Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU)
One year down the road, it is unfortunate that the Chibok girls’ problem has remained an unfortunate tumour in out national life. That is one huge minus to our security system, the security apparatus and intelligence gathering in this country. It was unfortunate that such number of children was taken away in one full swoop without the intervention of the security.
That saga and the Boko Haram successes brought to the fore, the daunting truth that the army was not equipped all this while. All the while we were waiting for arms to arrive to tackle Boko Haram and the question we keep asking is ‘what happened to the huge budget allocated for defence all these years?’ We need to interrogate the security system. In other climes, it takes just a while to take care of the situation we have in our hands. But in our own case, it is different.
We can liken the international community’s failure to intervene in such very dicey security situation we have as genocide. It is for this reason that we really need to review our relationships with some countries in the international community.
As for the campaign mounted by some non governmental organization for the release of the girls, I think the whole idea was to sensitise the government. It was so because the issue we have at hand is not one to gloss over. We have to task government to give account of the Chibok girls. We are right because we want to know what has happened. We must give account of every one including all that have suffered the orgy of Boko Haram insurgency.
In other for us to tackle the insurgency successfully, we need to involve the local people, including the parents of the missing girls, especially in their search. If it means enlisting the locals into the army, we need to do that because they know the terrain; they can work with the army to achieve the desire success.
This is the real challenge right before the incoming government. It has to work swiftly. It should collaborate with the parents of the missing girls. And this is important because the era of tackling the Boko Haram with kids’ gloves ought to be over.
In addition, we really need to feel for the parents of the missing girls. Nobody is happy to lose their child in a circumstance like that. Unfortunately, government kept assuming that the problem was not real. But we know how traumatic it has been for those parents.
It is at this point that we need to take some government psychologists close to those parents of the missing girls. In fact, they need to be part of the search for their daughters.
In all the effort to tackle Boko Haram, one is wondering why government cannot infiltrate the organisation. That is what espionage is all about. But rather than do that, it is even the Boko Haram that has infiltrated the army. This is a shame; we don’t want to see this happen again.
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