Our efforts at finding the abducted girls (I)

I have come across innocent citizens of Borno killed in thousands, some slaughtered by fellow human beings who think they earn rewards from God by their brutality. I have witnessed large scale destruction inflicted on us as a people in Borno by fellow human beings who again think they earn reward from God by their […]

I have come across innocent citizens of Borno killed in thousands, some slaughtered by fellow human beings who think they earn rewards from God by their brutality. I have witnessed large scale destruction inflicted on us as a people in Borno by fellow human beings who again think they earn reward from God by their intentional and planned atrocities. I have in the last 36 days also come across a situation where men abducted young, innocent schoolgirls, separated them from their education, from their parents, from their relations and friends and from their environment and more disturbing also, attempted to separate them from their own religion out of compulsion.
To every other Muslim, worldwide, these men that kill, destroy and abduct, insult Islam by calling themselves Muslims. They have contradicted every single tenet of the Islamic religion. They have in some cases, tried to change the ordained translation of verses in the Holy Quran. To every Muslim, a verse of the Holy Quran has clearly said that there is no compulsion in Religion. But to these men of violence, there is compulsion not only in religion but even in Islamic ideology. To these men, any human who doesn’t share their ideology deserves to be brutally killed. A Muslim that is of not of the Boko Haram sect is condemned to die and so is Christian. To them, the human race should go into extinction for their doctrine to thrive.
Borno has seen evil times. Our people have suffered. At times, when I lament this carnage in the midst of some associates, they remind me that I didn’t create Boko Haram, that in fact, I inherited it in 2011 when I was sworn-in amidst near complete breakdown of security in Maiduguri, the largest and most populated part of the state. But I normally say to them, that a leader is elected or appointed to solve problems, it doesn’t matter whether the leader created the problem or not. A leader is elected to find solution, this is governance. There is a whole difference between politics and governance. In politics, you tell the general public and victims about a problem, you tell them the gravity of the problem; and with emphasis, you tell them who to blame for it. But in governance, you identify a problem and work hard to solve it. Unfortunately for us in this interesting country, we all appear to lay more emphasis on politics than on governance. The Chibok incident, for me, has exposed our weakness as leaders in terms of assuming shared responsibilities.
In the two or three months, the entire western world mobilized men and resources, contributed so much funds in the search for a Malaysian airline which is believed to have crashed into the ocean. Majority in the western world suspect that the crew and passengers of that Malaysian airline are most probably dead. Despite that, massive investment was and is still being deployed in the search for whatever can be found as remains of those in that plane and its wreckage.
Now, while that is going on, here is Nigeria, there was a report that over 200 human creatures, young Nigerian girls about completing their secondary school education, where attacked in their school at night and whisked away like slaves in ancient years. And some Nigerians, one of them a former Minister and one time member of the Federal Executive Council which is the highest decision making body of this country, worst of all, a woman and a mother, came out to cast doubt over the abduction of these abduction.
That woman completely disregarded the sensitivity of that issue, the pains of the agonizing parents and our pains as a Government, to whom, the parents of these girls, cry out in desperation, unimaginable confusion and anguish. Every other unreasonable Nigerian that held that view only anchored the unfortunate position that was first expressed by Mrs Kema Chikwe. Doubt over that abduction pained me as much as the incident its self. Doubt over that abduction pained me far more than the childish theory, that as Government, we staged that abduction in order to create basis to stop the extension of emergency rule in Borno. By the way, that theory doesn’t make the slightest sense. In relation to that theory, if a government doesn’t want extension of emergency and chooses to fake happenings, the government should rather deny that the abduction ever took place, evil as that is, because the abduction is enough basis for the emergency extension given the fact that the incident puts a message across that there is new and big threat to students in schools hence the need for extension of emergency rule. Then, there was the issue of saying Chibok was not safe and we went ahead to open the school. Majority of these students are from Chibok axis, if the school was considered unsafe, I don’t think any right thinking parent would allow his or her child to study in an atmosphere of high risk.
It hurts me, however, that there was no kind of politics that was not introduced into that unfortunate Chibok incident. Even religion was brought in, all for the purpose of blame trade.
The politics didn’t help anybody at the end of the day. Soon after that incident, we thought that our 53 daughters that either witnessed that attack or escaped from abduction would be flown abroad for psychological counselling and some medical examinations. But then, with politics of doubt over the abduction, if the state government had flown these 53 girls abroad, the doubting Thomases would have gotten what to fly about to claim that the 53 girls were none existent, or they would have probably said we were taking the girls away from public scrutiny, probably we had something to hide.
 
Governor Shettima of Borno State made these remarks in Maiduguri yesterday to the Presidential Fact-Finding Committee on the abduction of Chibok schoolgirls