Where are Our Girls?
Our girls are still missing. They are three hundred in number – plus or minus just a few. It has been more than half a year now since the sudden abduction – April 14, 2014, to be specific. The entire nation is spellbound; Our governments are helpless; our villages are in ruins; the parents have become hopeless and despondent, still wondering, still asking, "What have we done wrong!" I always wished I had an answer for them; unfortunately, I don't. All I do is mourn, pray, sigh, sign petitions, write when I can, hope for the best, shake my head in despair, and wish these girls were from other nations where leaders are leaders, and citizens are "sacred;" where governments operate with zero tolerance for any evidence of desecration of their sacred institutions, vowing "not on our watch!"
For better or for worse, a country recently declared an all-out war, with full-scale military operation, against a group that dared to admit to the kidnapping of three (not 30, not 100, let alone 300) of their citizens. They vowed they would find their missing folks, dead or alive. They did. They found them dead, but at least find them they did! They then turned their anger and indignation on the perpetrators of the crime. The entire world has since been a witness to the ensuing fury and relentless pounding that have accompanied what they saw as abject disrespect on their people and a desecration of human dignity! The battle continues to rage. The whole nation turned their anger against the murderers of their own. I have asked myself, what is Nigeria doing?
In my country, Nigeria, rumor has circulated that many who should be championing the release of the girls, are paying fat salaries to the abductors and funding their sinister ploys! Elsewhere, I read of a military general who was given millions of dollars to arm the military for the sake of fighting the abductors but, instead, channeled the money to his personal account, and using such money to sponsor the perpetrators, Boko Haram. I have heard of politicians, rulers, and powers-that-be in Nigeria and elsewhere who are the godfathers behind the diabolical operations of our girls' abductors. I have no independent channel of confirming or dispelling the rumors, but what I sense in my mind stinks. I sense a conspiracy. I sense carelessness. I sense care-freeness. I sense hopelessness. I sense leadership irresponsibility. I sense indictment of a people that care less about the value of girls. I feel pain for those parents. My heart bleeds for the girls! The psyche of a people that can sleep easy when the girls of their bosom are in mysterious captivity of this magnitude is itself in ruins – almost beyond repair. What an abomination of desolation!
Our president, first lady, governors, their first ladies, legislators and even local politicians are each making millions – warping millions of our nation's money, and international community's donor nations' monies - every month, for what they deceptively, frivolously and mischievously call "security vote," money with no accountability to anyone. Yet, 300 missing girls, violently abducted, could not be found – not even a trace of them! How does one explain that? You do not need an army of half a million foot soldiers to fish these poor girls out of wherever they are being chained, raped, impregnated, stabed, killed and mentally abused. Even volunteer boys scouts in some sane places around the world, or informed neighborhood watchers have often formed successful search parties and rescued abductees. Our politicians are busy speaking big grammar – good or bad, traveling around the world, sending their own daughters (and sons, I must add), their girlfriends' children, as well as their girlfriends to the Americas, Europe, Asia and anywhere and everywhere. Yet, the Chibok girls remain in captivity – victims of a misinformed society and a maladjusted compendium of leadership!
"'My child is dead,' is a better declaration than 'my child has vanished,'" goes the age-long aphorism of my people. Painful as it may be, there is a psychological closure and throbbing relief to the burial of a loved one than the perpetual sleeplessness and unending agitation and exasperation that accompany a "vanished" human-being in the minds of their own people. It is even more sorrowful when the sudden disappearance is through kidnappings in the hands of a violent group that has done so with audacity and unabated effrontery! I was a little boy when one of my sisters went missing in the village. What I remember the most about it all is the fact that I never saw my mother eat anything until my sister was found! In fact, my mother cried so much that she developed very serious eye-watery problem that never got healed but followed her to her grave. The fact of a missing person brings anguish that is incredibly indescribable, a permanent damage to the minds of those who care about them. This is the sorrowful tale of our missing girls in Nigeria and the painful quandary their parents must grapple with the rest of their lives.
I once read that the federal government had proposed to "settle" with the parents and give them compensations for their girls. I heard that their abductors have married the girls out. I read that the president of the nation has ordered all the billboards that elicited finding the girls pulled out of their locations. I thought to myself, "they better not be!" How dare you marry a girl you kidnapped? How dare you compensate a mother for the kidnapping of her daughter? How dare you tell a father, "I am giving you some money so you don't have to worry any longer about your daughter who was violently snatched away right at the corner of your eye?"How dare you command a halt to the search of a missing soul? It is no wonder why thirteen of those parents have died since the day of the abduction. I could see many more dying and I could see the death of a nation's conscience if the girls were not found in peace and not in pieces! It is long overdue for every adducted girl to be brought into the swift and open arms and warm embrace of her parents. Until that happens, the Nigeria leadership should clad itself in sackcloth and ashes.
Michael O. Afolayan, USA
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