After Paris, what now for the Chibok girls?

The Chibok girls whose abduction by Boko Haram necessitated the Conference are still in captivity and the world is still at a loss on how to secure their safe release. Quite expectedly, the Paris Conference of the global challenge of Boko Haram, beyond the securing of freedom for girls. The scope was captured succinctly by […]

The Chibok girls whose abduction by Boko Haram necessitated the Conference are still in captivity and the world is still at a loss on how to secure their safe release. Quite expectedly, the Paris Conference of the global challenge of Boko Haram, beyond the securing of freedom for girls. The scope was captured succinctly by US Representative at the talks that because the meeting included not only Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan, but other Heads of State of surrounding countries, doing so gave both the short-term goal of coordinating efforts to bring the girls back home, but as well to look at the midterm and the long term goals of  ensuring that “there was coordination in the region and coordination globally to bring all of the assets to bear to deal with the horrific terror of Boko Haram, to try to secure the borders in the region, to ensure that these kind of acts don’t occur, and to ramp up the development in the sub-region so that there is not a breeding ground for terror.”
Now what? The Chibok girls are not home and sight must not be lost to the anguish and helplessness of the local Chibok community for whom the tragedy is personal, frustrating and traumatic.
It was my impression of lessons not learnt between the terror of Maitatsine of 1984 and that of Boko Haram in 2009 that preceded my invitation to hold this column. Without claiming any expertise in the management of terror, I dare say, looking at the options offered in that article and several others that followed over the years, that Nigeria is where it is purely as a result of the failure of leadership at the various levels, to have nipped in the bud, what began as a misdemeanour and petty crime. Nigeria, particularly President Goodluck Jonathan, has been the butt of jokes on the international scene, derided by leaders, politicians and authoritative media organs.
In Nigeria, it is a blame game of the most irresponsible kind, faith on faith, and tribe on tribe. Government officials blame the opposition and vice versa. This lingered on for all these years that Boko Haram grew from a protest to an insurgency of globally notable proportion.
In times like this, a nation comes together, with compatriots rallying round the flag. It is sadly not so in Nigeria due to institutional indiscipline and the indifference of leadership to calamities. Thus all opportunities are more often than not, lost to reason and logic, and given instead to politics and corrupt excesses for personal gains. Yet there is no way to proffer solutions without laying the blame at someone’s feet.
In Paris, Nigeria and its surrounding countries agreed on a united war against terrorism, resolving on specific security protocols on movement of people and goods across borders. There is no secret to it. Foreign powers trust that all countries except Nigeria will honour the protocols. Even Nigerians do not have confidence in the commitments given by their own Government. But we should disappoint them by honouring the protocols. We must do so in the interest of our own peace and image recovery as a leading African nation.
There are two levels in addressing the problem. It is akin to lifting fallen trees. The last tree felled is the first lifted. In our case, the last tree felled is our moral standing, with corruption having eaten too deep into the national fabric, to the extent that the military, relied upon for times like these is also a victim of the malady. This tree fell on the collapse of our ability to guarantee safety of life and property to the citizenry. President Jonathan has to deal with the incapacitation of the armed forces related to thievery of allocated budgets and allowances in order to raise morale and discipline. As I have continuously stated, it is futile to battle insurgents if N20 buys the highway checkpoints, and more money renders the borders porous on the Nigerian side. It has to be all encompassing for it needs to be understood that the reported decay in our armed forces is a result of the pillage of the treasury by the political class. The fish is thus rotten from head to tail.
With these two fallen trees lifted last one first, I believe that dialogue and a lasting ceasefire is very possible and I am excited about many suggestions being made to return the abducted girls. It is for Boko Haram to understand that it is not in anyone’s interest to force the weighty wrath of the international community. It will put the children the more in harm’s way, and bring about a more disastrous routing of the insurgency with dire consequences. An unconditional return of the abducted children will go far to open flanks for more positive and beneficial steps on fundamental rights of individuals. In this regard, Government must be prepared to ensure that no persons known to have engaged in extra-judicial murders of suspects are allowed to escape the full measure of the law.
It is unfortunate that when we could have nipped this challenge in the bud since 2009, we more or less ignored it and instead tried to gain political capital or as of recent, appropriate largesse from it. It became a brand for all types of crimes, from murders to robberies of banks, to extraction of budgetary excesses from the economy that were not matched by successes in the fight against the insurgency. As is expected, we have reached a national cul-de-sac – a political regime unwilling to commit itself to fighting the causes of the insurgency, and armed forces unable to commit themselves to attain the task commanded by the Commander in Chief. We have spent over N2.5 trillion and are yet to surpass the ordinances available to the insurgency.
For I ask, did it require the French President Francois Hollande to mastermind the meeting of the African States over the Boko Haram challenge, given Nigeria’s track record of having ferried troups to Liberia where it stopped a civil war and installed a regime? Or Angola, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and Sierra Leone where our troops performed creditably with distinction and in unknown terrain for that matter! It should not have, but mighty giant or Africa is now neither mighty, nor giant. Sad.