Between February 19, 2018 when the
Dapchi schoolgirls were abducted by supposed Boko Haram insurgents and
Wednesday, March 21, 2018, when the news broke that 101 of them had been
released, I had offered perspectives on the incident in two articles. The
first was titled: “Chibok and Dapchi girls: The whoredom of Karma” while
the second was titled:“Gbomogbomo as metaphor.”
The second article,
in particular, provides the take-off point for the current intervention.
Therein, I had expressed a concern at the role abductions of schoolgirls play
in our presidential politics. My thesis was that our abducted
schoolgirls in the northeast zone have become objects of political bargain in
the hands of our modern day real or prearranged gbomogbomo,
a Yoruba word transliterated as stealer of children.
I recalled
how the abduction of Chibok schoolgirls on April 14, 2014, about a year to the
2015 presidential election, shattered President Goodluck Jonathan’s
administration and created a yawning security hole in his re-election effort.
The opposition All
Progressives Congress (APC) would latch on to it to promise us maximum national
security.
The APC
administration under General Muhammadu Buhari has been in a hurry to prove that
it has fulfilled its promise. Its claim of having technically defeated the
Boko Haram insurgents accords with its promise.
But the claim is not
in pari materia with the evidence on the ground. How secure are the
schoolgirls today? Schoolgirls abduction has combined with killings by Fulani
herdsmen to rubbish that electoral promise.
The Buhari
administration has had its share of security embarrassment with the abduction
of the 110 Dapchi schoolgirls.
How does one explain
the fact that this happened about a year to Buhari’s re-election enterprise
similar in form and tenor to the Chibok happenstance under the Jonathan
administration? Karma?
Besides, the Chibok
schoolgirls abduction saga was a loot opener of sorts. When the reality dawned
on the Jonathan administration that the abduction had caused it a collateral
damage, it became desperate and decided to throw money at the incident in the
context of its sheer atrociousness.
It was a challenge to
national sovereignty that the Boko Haram terrorists would gleefully announce
that they had annexed a part ofNigeria.
Even though the saga
unfolded and fitted perfectly into the opposition’s grand design to sink the
Jonathan administration, some top-placed officials and military chiefs
capitalised on the development to corner mega bucks in the guise of negotiating
with Boko Haram insurgents and procuring hardware for military operations to
rescue the Chibok girls and flush out the insurgents from the northeast
zone.
The diversion of
billions of naira meant for hardware has since been confirmed by the Buhari
administration, which has been working on recouping the stolen funds from some
former military chiefs and other entities that unjustifiably accessed the
security budget through the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) then
superintended by retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki.
It is also difficult
to fault the assumption that the fight against Boko Haraam insurgency has
provided potential fifth columnists in successive administrations with
opportunities to make money through contracts for the purchase of hardware,
funding of military operations and negotiations with insurgents for release of
abducted schoolgirls.
That exactly is the
point. The real insurgents and the
prearranged gbomogbomo know that the schoolgirls represent the heart
of the insurgency matter.
Abducting them has
become an attention-getting strategy to blackmail successive administrations.
Global and national sensibilities are quite easily evoked because of the
existential threat that the insurgents pose to the femininity of the
schoolgirls who are prone to sexual abuses.
I doubt if the
abduction of schoolboys would attract such human sympathy. Do we still remember
the 59 schoolboys that were killed by the Boko Haram insurgents
in Federal Government College, Buni Yadi in Yobe state on
February 26, 2014? That was before the Chibok tragedy of April 14,
2014.
Those who invaded
Dapchi knew perfectly where to strike and get the whole nation immersed in
frenzy: the schoolgirls.
But whether the
Dapchi abduction was real or simulated is worthy of interrogation. I personally
believe that the girls were evacuated from their school in curious and
controversial circumstances.
There were purported
intelligence reports that Boko Haram insurgents were going to
strike.
Yet, the military
allegedly withdrew from Dapchi, claiming to have handed over the town to the
Police after it had safely secured it. But the Police had reportedly
rejected the claim.
The import of that
was that those who evacuated the schoolgirls had free ingress and egress at
Dapchi.
The 12-man committee
set up by the Buhari administration to investigate the circumstances
surrounding the Dapchi schoolgirls’ abduction is expected to come up with
some damning reports. The committee must put its nose to the
grindstone and do the needful.
The committee should
not be distracted by the fact that 101 of the schoolgirls had been returned to
Dapchi. It should even take administrative notice of the curious
return of the schoolgirls.
The military troops
were not in Dapchi when the girls were returned. Were the troops
told to back off to enable those who evacuated the girls to return them
safely?
Was the return of the
schoolgirls by installments a strategy by those who evacuated them to ensure
that the administration or the military show fidelity to the terms of release
of the girls? There are nine girls yet to be returned.
I am at great pains
to divorce the incident from politics, especially against the backdrop of
Buhari self-assessment that his administration responded better than Jonathan
when the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted in 2014.
Is it not probable
that the Dapchi abduction and the release of the girls by installments could
have been simulated to portray the Buhari administration as more responsive and
committed to the rescue of abducted schoolgirls supposedly by Boko Haram
insurgents, especially after the administration’s disastrous response to the
killings by Fulani herdsmen in Benue in particular?
To deflect the
suggestion of a conspiracy theory, the president must address the nation on how
the return of the schoolgirls was achieved or negotiated.
Sincerely, it would
not be too much of an obligation by the administration to tell an obviously
cynical citizenry how 101 Dapchi schoolgirls were returned to base just as they
were evacuated without ado.
By Sufuyan Ojeifo
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