15th September, 2014
By Peter Claver Opara
And so, the famous #BringBackOurGirls has transmuted to #BringBackJonathan? Quite ingenious; of the type that has rendered Nigeria prostrate and made it the butt of the ribaldry of the outside world today. By that miraculous act was meant a permanent seal on the fate of the same campaign that captured the entire world as it berthed. It was the campaign to force our sluggish government to action and possibly secure the release of the 200 Chibok secondary school girls taken into captivity by the ghoulish insurgent group, Boko Haram. As I write this, it is 150 days since the incident happened. There is nothing on ground to suggest that the girls would soon regain their freedom. Indeed, the Nigerian officialdom and its standpatters are fighting frantically to consign the issue to the expansive dustbin of Nigerian history and they have almost succeeded. Gradually, Nigerians, so afflicted by very poor retentive minds, have almost completely forgotten the Chibok girls.
Let us recall that for some weeks after that horrific act, the Nigerian government remained mute on the issue. It is even instructive that the kidnap of the girls happened a day after a bloody bombing of the federal capital, Abuja where nearly 100 people were killed. The massive death was not enough to deter Jonathan and his PDP from mounting a needless campaign rally in Kano the following day. It was the day Boko Haram struck in Chibok and walked away with hapless schoolgirls taking their examinations. For the two weeks that the Jonathan government kept mute over this egregious crime, it was living in doubt, which is a grave indictment of its capacity to steer the country. It had so politicized the fight against terror that it was minded to dismiss terror attacks as the antics of his enemies and the opposition to wrestle power from it. To the regime, what matters is power and how to retain it. During this period, Boko Haram gained innumerable footing ferrying the girls to God knows where. The best that came from Nigerian officialdom when this was raging was an embarrassing claim by the Nigerian military that it had rescued the girls. This turned out a grand ruse and reinforced the rickety nature governance and its accoutrements have suffered in Nigeria.
It took the launch of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag and the ensuing campaign to rouse the Jonathan regime from its sleep occasioned by a self delusory denial state. The rage the campaign provoked in the international community was so enormous that world figures, statesmen and celebrities signed on to the campaign. The position of the international community was so damning and derogatory of the Jonathan government and its capacity to handle simple issues that it was forced to admit the enormity of the problem. The global position could simply be summed in the scathing remarks of US Republican candidate in the last presidential election, Senator John McCain thus; “We shouldn’t have waited for a practically non existing government to give us a go ahead before we mount a humanitarian effort to rescue the girls”. It was real Golgotha for the disoriented regime and it reluctantly admitted that indeed school girls were kidnapped. Browbeaten and crest fallen, it lapped up international offer for assistance and started several weeks behind the Boko Haram abductors, to try salvage an already messy situation.
But the regime never forgave the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners led by inimitable former Minister and former Vice President of the World Bank, Oby Ezekwesili. It never suffered their task gladly and as the international concern over the kidnapped girls ebbed, the government turned its attention to how to rubbish the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners for exposing its rump to the entire world. First, it tried to use the police to dislodge them from where they mounted a permanent sit in. Again, it arrested its leaders. When these seem not to deter the resoluteness of the campaigners, it sponsored some hoodlums to take the fight to the campaigners and these, like the paid robots they were, unleashed violence and grave damage to the campaigners in the presence of the police.
The government was to up its ante against the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners when its leader, Ezekwesili was detained at the Abuja airport, on her way to London. She was quickly released over the international outrage this act of impunity immediately provoked. Then, Marylyn Ogar the spokeswoman of the Department of State Security, who is fast cutting the notorious image of a PDP partisan war farer, launched into the idiotic campaign of calumny against the leaders of the group. Even at that, direct personal attacks were launched on the person of Ezekwesili by paid agents, hirelings and apologists of the Jonathan government and these proved futile in containing the determination of the leaders of the campaign.
Nigerians still believe that if even a fraction of the attention the government placed on the campaigners was sincerely turned to the rescue efforts of the girls, we would have had a more cheery picture regarding that incident today. But the government was rather consumed with the desire to haunt the messenger than with genuine concern to rescue the abducted girls. The American intelligence hands that were drafted in at the height of the rescue effort recently complained that they were frustrated by the huge level of corruption that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the Nigerian security system that it cannot do much with the rescue of the girls, as Nigerians eagerly expected.
Today, a horrifying scenario a shocked and awed nation is forced to live with is the face of a rampaging Boko Haram, seemingly reinvigorated, continuing to take towns and cities from the fumbling Nigerian control. Riled by corruption, incompetence and lack of drive, the Nigerian army has become a basket case; fleeing from the rampaging Boko Haram and even enacting shameful defection to Cameroun in the face of the Boko Haram assault. The Nigerian state remains dangerously exposed to the relentless attack of the insurgents while the Jonathan government concentrates its efforts in battling the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners and mounting campaigns for the re-election of a government that has so failed its primary mandate of securing the lives and properties of Nigerians, as it had failed in every other sector of governance. These are when the government is not making political capital from successive attacks and of course, whipping up sympathy about its powerlessness to curb the insurgents.
As a last ditch effort to blot out the #BringBackOurGirls campaigns and permanently delete it and the abducted girls from the sub-consciousness of Nigerians, the government and its supporters launched a #BringBackGoodluck2015 campaign and proceeded to overrun Abuja with loud and glossy banners and posters bearing this message. In concept, it was a deft effort to mock, ridicule and indeed consign the #BringBackOurGirls campaign to the fast receding mindset of Nigerians. That is Jonathan regime’s way of dealing with the recalcitrant Chibok girls’ issue. But it proved a fatal error. Like most of the moves and calculations of the regime, it proved to be a tragic faux pas that will certainly injure and hurt the Jonathan comeback dream which informed this assault on the campaign.
The influential Washington Post, came out seething with rage in condemning this awkward campaign and how it sought to mutilate the original BringBackOurGirlshastag. Hear the paper in a powerful piece titled; “This May Be The Most Inappropriate Political Hashtag Of The Year”:
“While #BringBackOurGirls was just a brief cause celebre in the West — a passing moment to get morally exercised and then move on — it had a deeper meaning in Nigeria. It echoed the larger frustrations of a society that has little faith in its political leadership, is fed up with endemic corruption and wants genuine reform and better governance. Jonathan blamed activists espousing the hashtag for ‘politicizing’ the crisis.
“In this context, the new campaign slogan is particularly galling. Jonathan has not brought back the girls, yet his campaign expects Nigeria to bring him back to power. One wonders if it will spawn more rich satire among Nigerians on social media. After all, there’s plenty of precedent.” The condemnation of the paper, the BBC and the prurient attacks Nigerians levelled on this dumb effort in the social media were enough to provoke Jonathan’s regime to issue a rebuttal, denying the campaign and ordering the removal of the nauseous banners that were mounted in all parts of Abuja for this purpose. Even at that, it didn’t offer a word of such denial to the equally notorious TAN re-election campaign that had been masking and revelling all over the country in the face of the mounting security and economic umbrage the country is facing. That failure was enough to cast doubts on the sincerity of Jonathan in denying complicity in this ensuing effort to blot out a noble cause. Even as one wonders what we should bring Jonathan back to do, in the face of the mediocre governance we have had under his watch, it is good that he and his handlers made this false move because it stands to play back the #BringBackOurGirls campaign right on track and challenge a government that has so naturalized failure in not only securing the release of the hapless Chibok girls but also the security of Nigerians.
#BringBackGoodluck2015 indeed….. To do what, if I may ask?
•Oparah wrote from Lagos. E-mail: [email protected]