On the road to Chibok

Despite that the Buhari administration has hit the northeast insurgency a blow that may eventually prove terminal, last week, gun men attacked Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Yobe state and left in the dust  behind them the controversy as to whether or not some of the students have been whisked away. At […]

Despite that the Buhari administration has hit the northeast insurgency a blow that may eventually prove terminal, last week, gun men attacked Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Yobe state and left in the dust  behind them the controversy as to whether or not some of the students have been whisked away. At first, authorities claimed that the girls merely run into neighboring bush and so it was only a matter of time for them to be reassembled. 

Later on, the DG Press to Yobe’s governor Geidam, Abdullahi Bego stated in his Facebook page that the girls have been recovered. In a twist of events however, he later issued a statement apologising and making clarifications to the effect that the girls have not been rescued. Bego regretted that the earlier public statement was made upon relying on information given by one of the security agencies on the field. 

On a sad note, the girls are today missing in action. And this Dapchi case reminds the nation of how some girls were abducted by insurgents at a boarding secondary school in Chibok in 2014. It also reminds us of how the same insurgents entered Federal Government College, Buni-Yadi only to kill about fifty students in the same year. 

Nigeria has known suicide bombings, mass killings and abduction since 2009 when insurgency in the northeast became a matter of global concerns. Surprisingly however, the nation appears not to have learnt any lessons from the past. If it had, appropriate measures would have been taken to avoid this avoidable incidence. 

The incidence was avoidable for the fact that it was experienced in Chibok and Buni-Yadi respectively. And because experience is the best teacher, there were supposed to be collaborative efforts by the government, its security agencies and community leaders to ensure that no school is attacked again, not only in the northeast subregion, but also in Nigeria in general.

But as it is, like the Chibok girls, the Dapchi girls have also been failed by the federal government in whose hands the nation’s security apparatus rests. They weren’t protected at their hour of need. We  pray they are rescued soon from the hands of their abductors so we get off the road to Chibok. 

Mukhtar Jarmajo wrote from Maitama, Abuja    [email protected]