Anyone who has a heart.…

By Muyiwa Adetiba

I pride myself on being strong emotionally. Besides, years of handling news of all shades and analysing stories which revolve around human duplicity have hardened me to the level of being a cynic. But early this week, much to my surprise, a soft inner core was exposed. It had to do with the release of the Chibok girls.

I first heard of the release of the 21 Chibok girls on CNN. The reporter in me quickly crosschecked. I instinctively analysed it to be about 10% of the total number of abducted girls which indicated that some serious negotiation was on going.

I have always had a soft spot for human interest angles to stories and had wondered why our newspapers, magazines and even the BBOG (Bring back our girls) advocates underplayed that aspect of news in relation to the abducted girls. Why for example, didn’t they bring home to us, the anguish, the yearning, and the holes these girls must have left in the homes and hearts of their parents?

I often wondered at the toll which ‘not knowing but hoping’ must have taken on those parents. A Yoruba proverb says: ‘A child is dead is better than a child is missing.’ They must have felt they would never hear the laughter of their daughters again.

A simple, vivid diary of some of the parents and how they were coping with the absence of their girls would have done a lot to nudge even those with the hearts of stone including those who dismissed ‘the whole abduction saga’ as a farce or political gimmick.

This week, the full force of the power of the human angle to news played itself when the released girls were shown on TV with their parents. The joy, the emotional release, the spontaneity of re-union could not have better scripted by the best screen writer or captured by the best film director in the world. It was graphic; it was charged; it was oh! so real. They say you never grow old to your parents.

This was aptly demonstrated by a mother who backed her ‘grown’ daughter and danced with her. But what brought a lump to my throat and made my eyes wet was the picture of a man who carried her daughter in his arms and the girl was saying softly: ‘Papa, papa, papa’ over and over.

That picture will forever be etched in my mind. How often had she wondered if she would ever say that again in captivity? How often had she dreamt of being back at home only to wake up to the harsh reality of her stark existence? And as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, she and her fellow captives must have felt hope slip away. I wonder what their anchor was during the periods they experienced the depths of depression and despair.

I wonder what they felt was their future as bombs landed and death filled the air. At what point did they lose the childhood innocence of a cocooned school life to embrace the brutal adult world of disaffection and hate they found themselves thrust into?

Did they experience love and kindness during their almost three years of captivity? Or were they simply sex slaves to be eventually used as bargaining chips? Those who watched the TV footage and have hearts beating in their chests must have shed a tear or two.

All they have to do is put themselves in the shoes of either the parents or the girls. These poor girls were victims of a war they did not cause and could not prevent. A war that has altered their lives and changed their personalities irretrievably.

There are many lessons to be learnt from the release of these girls. The first is from the BBOG advocates who refused to give up. We are in a world of constant wars, natural disasters and political elections which means the attention span to a single issue is difficult.

Yet the advocates kept the BBOG alive. The politicians wanted to move on. The government itself wanted to move on. The world had made the appropriate noises and could have moved on. But the advocates kept the issue on the burner. The lesson is that we must stay with whatever we believe in no matter how long and no matter the inconvenience.

Another lesson is that we must not always believe that government is not working simply because we can’t see the result immediately. Often, there are hard choices which it must have to make. Yet, another lesson is that we must never lose hope as a people and as a nation.

Many never thought we would see any of the Chibok girls alive or live to see the day our government would negotiate something for the benefit of its people. In everything, let us learn to keep hope alive. One other lesson is that every life is precious, not just those of the rich. Those mothers were as elated as Aisha or Mama Peace would have been if the shoe was on the other foot. Every rape, every kidnap, every forced marriage matters because life matters.

As we await the remaining girls, we must never forget what led to Boko Haram in the first instance. We are now talking about the greed, the antipathy, the selfishness and the incompetence of the elite. For years, 90% of our income as a nation was used to feed only 10% of the people.

There are people from the North-East who had oil blocs. Many were educated by Northern or Federal Governments and have fed fat off governments. Yet they took the ladder of progress away from their youths and home towns. Worse, they appropriated the resources meant for their people to live in opulence in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and abroad. The result is the uneducated, unskilled and therefore gullible populace.

The downturn of the economy means there will be many flashpoints in the country. Some of the zones can turn out to be worse than Boko Haram if care is not taken.

Yet part of the solution lies in inclusive governance and getting rid of corruption. Everybody must have a stake in project Nigeria. It is in this regard that I find the revelations of cash and carry judgements in the judiciary very disturbing. I find the defence of the judges and the senior lawyers including those one had respected more disturbing.

Is there any defence, technical or otherwise, for theft and deliberate miscarriage of justice? I also find the fence sitting of the people most disturbing. Buhari has done his bit as far as I am concerned. He has exposed the rottenness in the executive, the legislature and now the judiciary. We the people, if we want to sanitise the country should take it from there. Where is our sense of outrage?

The social media is full of jokes on ‘executhieves’, ‘legislooters’ and ‘judiciarogues.’ But it is no laughing matter. These people are collectively responsible for the poverty in the land, and poverty is responsible for Boko Haram and the likes all over the country. We have to chase them out of town. The BBOG advocates have shown us one of the ways.

 

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