The fact that the Nigerian government was unable to intervene successfully in rescuing dozens of schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists from Government Secondary, Chibok, in Borno State remains a big shame, 10 years after the gory incident.

The fact that the Nigerian government was unable to intervene successfully in rescuing dozens of schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists from Government Secondary, Chibok, in Borno State remains a big shame, 10 years after the gory incident. Not only is it a shame, but it is also a blight on the Federal Government that its failure to rescue the Chibok girls has earned the country the sordid reputation of an unsafe place to raise children. Now, after all the lamentations and stories of remembrance, the President Bola Tinubu administration that has inherited the problem of kidnapping and killings of hapless Nigerians, cannot shy away from the absurdities, as government will continue to be asked to account for the girls until each one of them is so accounted for.

It is bad enough that many of the girls have died; some have gone completely out of the search radar; many have been rendered permanently damaged; and to cap it all, more children, in and out of schools, have been kidnapped over the past 10 years across the country. Hundreds are currently languishing in illegal detention and under conditions of slavery. Tinubu must be worried that this sordid state of affairs is prevalent in Nigeria as against most other civilised countries worldwide. 

It has been ten years since the abduction of 276 students from Government Secondary, Chibok, Borno State, by Boko Haram Islamists. It has been ten harrowing years for 96 of the girls who are reported to still be in captivity and ten painful years for parents of the students, some of whom have lost hope of ever seeing their daughters. It has been ten years of waiting on the government to take responsibility, admit failure and bring to a closure this man-made disaster that opened the floodgate for more daring, repeated abductions.

Chibok school abduction was a case of gross negligence on the part of the public servants who were elected and swore the oath to safeguard citizens. The government in Borno State at the time, under whose custody the children were kept played politics with its assignment. It was reported that snippets of intelligence suggested the Chibok abduction was in the pipeline. But the government whose responsibility it was to secure premises where the students were billed to write the West African School Certificate Examination looked the other way. It was even reported that the suggestion for the examination to be postponed was rebuffed by authorities, suggesting complicity and sabotage. 

The casualties of Chibok are not limited to the girls who were forcefully taken away from their school. The Chibok Parents Association reported that 48 of their members had died due to trauma and heartache, a situation compounded when feedback from the authorities to cushion parents’ anxieties and distresses was not forthcoming. They died not knowing what became of their beloved children.  

  

Those of the girls who have returned in trickles have come back with children fathered by Boko Haram extremists. The Murtala Mohammed Foundation (MMF), which released a report to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the abductions said 21 of the girls came back with 34 children. This is sure evidence of the amount of sexual violence the girls experienced while in captivity. They were forcefully married to dreaded warlords. These Boko Haram children should be a source of concern to the government. They need special attention and care from the government as well as society, to mitigate probable consequences of stigmatised and malnourished childhood in the future. Their mothers too deserve support. All lives matter.

Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Foundation lamented that ten years after Chibok nothing has changed, except that the country now battles an epidemic of kidnapping. She called on government and the international community to address the underlying drivers of conflict, extremism and violence against women and children.

 We join calls for authorities at home to develop the political will to deal with crimes of terrorism and kidnapping. That can only happen if government is determined to make scapegoats of terrorists and their sponsors. 

It is inexcusable that the layers of security and emergency detachments that were put on red alert in those heydays of the insurgency all failed to rescue the girls until they were shipped to the dreaded Sambisa Forest. It remains a shame and a blight on the Federal Government that its failure to rescue the Chibok girls has earned the country the sordid reputation of an unsafe place to raise children. 

Ten years after Chibok, Government’s Safe School Initiative, a programme that was designed to make the school environment safe has not been successful, particularly in the north. According to Save the Children, an international NGO, more than 1,600 schoolchildren have been abducted since Chibok. More than 180 students have been reported killed and more than 90 injured. Sixty school staffers were kidnapped and 14 killed, with 25 schools destroyed. Between December 2020 and February 2021, over 600 children were abducted from schools in Zamfara, Katsina and Niger states. 

  

The most recent is the cruel abduction of 137 pupils and students from their school in Kuriga, Kaduna State, in March 2024 and ferried to Zamfara. They were subjected to inhuman treatment for more than two weeks in a very unsafe environment. The repercussion of these heightened attacks on schools is that children are scared to go to school. This has compounded the out-of-school menace in the country, with 20 million students not in classrooms as estimated by UNESCO. Many schools have been forced to shut down.

We decry government’s languid attitude towards combating kidnapping and terrorism. This has no doubt encouraged impunity and emboldened the criminals. Till date, there is yet no official investigation or inquisition into the Chibok tragedy. All the layers of authority that failed to protect the girls have not been held to account. All the promises made by the Buhari administration, both during the 2015 presidential campaigns and after he became president, have turned out to be empty. 

The most agonising is the case of Leah Sharibu, the schoolgirl who was among 110 female students of Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State, kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists on February 19, 2018. The government negotiated the release of 109 of them and left Sharibu behind, on the excuse that she refused to renounce her Christian faith.

Tinubu should revisit the Chibok abduction to foreclose that painful, watershed episode. Punishment should be meted out to those who carried out that attack and their sponsors. Fiscal and psycho-social compensation should be given to parents whose daughters are still in Sambisa and the government should commit to bringing back the girls. Those who are back should be rehabilitated and returned to school. The government must account for that sadistic Chibok experience.