...too many answered questions!
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| abducted school girls |
Nigerians woke up on Thursday, April 14, 2014, to the news
of the abduction of over 200 girls from Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS)
in Chibok town, Borno State by the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents. The news came
at a time when Nigerians were yet to recover from the Monday bomb blast that
rocked Nyanya Motor Park, a few kilometres from the Federal Capital City, where
scores of people lost their lives and property worth millions of naira vandalised.
It is over 50 days now and the helpless girls have not been
found.
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| JANATHAN: Shekau, i am warning you ooo. surrender now and receive amnesty or else... |
Secondary schools in Borno State had earlier evacuated their
students from the schools after the insurgents killed 59 boys in Federal
Government College, Buni-Yadi, Yobe State on February 25. However, some schools were selected for
students in SSS3 to write their WASSCE. GGSS in Chibok was one of the schools
where the examinations were conducted and students from different schools were
merged to write their exams there.
On the fateful day, the Arts student were said to have
completed their examination. They were reportedly told to go back home
immediately after their exams. While some of them went home, others remained in
school with the science students who were waiting to write their Physics paper.
254 girls were said to have been in their dormitory when the
insurgents struck. 40 girls reportedly escaped while they were being
transported leaving 234 girls behind. The escapees said the insurgents, who
were dressed in the Army uniform, said they wanted to transport them to a safe
place since they received reports that the school would soon be under attack.
They said they jumped out of the vehicles when one of the other vehicles
developed a fault. The other girls were reportedly transported to Sambisa
forest, South of Borno State, the sect hideout.
A lot of mysteries have surrounded the kidnap of these girls
and several questions have been raised by critics. One of the questions is the
exact number of the abducted girls. Varying figures have been released among
which are 219, 234, 254, 276 girls. This disparity, among others, have made
some people (such as Asari Dokubo) to insist that are no missing girls.
One of the mysteries is how 40 girls would escape without
being shot. One could argue that the insurgents left them because they already
had a lot of girls. Another is how the girls were transported without being
noticed, not to talk about being challenged by any of the villagers. If they
had been transported by Hilux trucks as claimed, how many trucks would they
have used for over 200 girls? Also a mystery is why the names and pictures of
the abducted girls and those that escaped were not released by the school and
WAEC. It was argued that the pictures and names of the escaped girls couldn’t
be released in order to ensure their security.
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| SHEKAU: See you, do you think you can arrest me? i will sell the girls, there is market for them... |
Another question is why the kingpin of the insurgents,
Abubakar Shekau, releases videos to say exactly what people say happened to the
girls? Shortly after the kidnap of the girls, the media speculated that the
girls were being sold and married off to neighbouring countries of Chad and
Niger with a bride price of N2000. Shekau released a video on the 5th
of May to say he would marry them off and sell them saying there is a market
for selling girls. Later, some people said he was forcefully converting the
girls to Islaam. On the 12th day of May, he released another video
of the girls dressed in Hijab and reciting the Qur’an. This video sparked
controversies.
The first is how majority of the girls who were not Muslims
and had never recited the Qur’an could recite fluently. The second is the exact
location of the girls. Sambisa forest is said to be a “forest”, but in the
video, the location of the girls didn’t portray the forest we were made to
believe. One wonders if they are actually in a forest or not. The third is that
the girls looked neat and well-fed. This generated a question of how the
insurgents got the money to provide Hijab (Muslim attires) for all the girls.
Definitely, the money would be coming from somewhere and the food items would
be bought from a market.
Another bothering issue is the way the government is
handling the issue. It took the President nineteen days to publicly speak on
the abducted girls. He didn’t believe that the girls are abducted in the first
instance. The Nigerian Armed Forces have not been able to find the exact
location of the missing girls and their kidnappers. Truth be told, if they
really want to locate them, they would have done that. The videos are being
uploaded on the internet; the IP address can be traced to get the location. The
Nigerian Forces looking for the girls can easily trace which bank large amounts
of money are being withdrawn from and which markets food items were being
purchased in large numbers. Also is how he is uploading the videos. Is he using
a generator or he is PHCN powered? Who pays the PHCN bills or where do they buy
large quantities of fuel to power their generator?
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| PATIENCE JONATHAN: Na only you waka come? |
The display of the First Lady on National television also
prompted lots of reactions first of which was her reaction was 22 days late.
Her exhibition prompted an article written by Tunde Asaju titled, Change
the Joke Jesters. He wrote, “The
First family is a circus, the security chiefs are the jesters the government is
a comedy of errors and nobody is amused except the courtiers, contractors, the
ten percenters and the rented crowd. The idiotic way of handling serious issue
of embarrassment rubs off on the global recognition earned by our citizens
abroad... What a shame that our ship of governance is sinking or at best
adrift, our Captain is either too inebriated to handle the situation or at best
has left the ship to hunt fingerlings. Change the joke jesters, nobody is
laughing.”
One other developing issue is the foreign-aid. The United
States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and China offered to help Nigeria find
the missing girls. While some Nigerians have hailed their efforts, others are
against it. Personally, I believe if Nigerian government is serious about
fighting the insurgents, they would have done so a long time ago. The reality
of the situation with the United States and the so-called world super powers is
that, whenever they go into a country for “interventions”, they leave it worse
than they met it. Take a look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya
and a host of others. Those countries are worse than when the U.S. went there.
We also need to understand that they once predicted Nigeria would not remain as
a country after 2015. This implies that when Nigeria was being created in 1914,
it was not intended for it to last beyond a hundred years. It was an experiment.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Boko Haram is their creation and being funded by
them to destabilize Nigeria so that they can come in for assistance and split
the country. After all, Taliban was a CIA creation to fight the former USSR.
- story by Safiyyah AbdurRasaq (Our correspondent, Abuja)
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