Chibok Girls: Yay or Nay?

How could anyone in his right senses still be doubting that the Chibok tragedy is real in the face of all what has happened? Since the recent release of another batch of 82 of the abducted girls, the social media has been awash with new conspiracy theories. Some said the girls were looking too well fed and couldn’t possibly have been in the hands of Boko Haram, ignoring the fact that many of them were forcefully married off to commanders among the terrorists and were therefore in the first line to get food in the enclave. From all the accounts we have read, the terrorist ‘commanders’ took very good care of their wives on the condition that they demonstrated slavish obedience.

Another theory was that since Boko Haram had been degraded and their Ground Zero fortress routed, the girls couldn’t possibly have been in Sambisa Forest. If those critics had bothered to check the internet for facts about Sambisa, they would have found out that the forest is 10 times the size of Fayose’s Ekiti State, as attested to by the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) team that visited the place. Sambisa forest is 686 square kilometres while Lagos State is 3,577 km²; Enugu State 7,161 km²; Imo State 5,530 km²; Ekiti State, 6,353 km². Do the arithmetic!

Another doubter wrote: “It is not easy for girls with “parlour upbringing” to live in the bush for three years without breaking down”, meaning that the girls’ release was a ruse designed to fool the world. ‘Parlour upbringing’ indeed! Such arrant ignorance!

Predictably, the chief doubter is Governor Ayodele Fayose, the pestilence that has taken over Ekiti State and on whose neck hangs a series of treasury looting and money laundering allegations. “The government is flying dubious kites and selling cheap dummies to distract the people”, said Fayose. “What is NOT missing cannot be found…”

There is nothing I can say here that could approximate the curses Fayose earned in the social media for saying the girls were not missing. The same Fayose was alive when former President Jonathan launched a scorching attack on the terrorists shortly before the last presidential elections in order to shore up his image in the eyes of the electorate. If the girls were not missing, what then was Jonathan chasing? It was the same Fayose who told the nation last year that Buhari’s wife was wanted for crimes in the US only to be proved wrong.

Fayose and his co-travellers wonder why the girls’ parents have not been allowed free access to them. But I ask, which parents? Is he talking about the same parents he alleged were hired to play the role? If the girls are not missing, can we be talking about their parents?

The authorities have disclosed that the girls were being debriefed and their mental and physical health assessed, but the doubters want the girls released into society as if nothing happened. A clue to how complex the situation is: four Chibok girls reportedly pledged allegiance to Boko Haram as the girls’ minds had been polluted.

Ignorance is a disease. A few days ago in Casablanca, I was privileged to interview a young man who had survived Al Shabab kidnap and he regaled me with stories of how I shall tell that story another day. But negotiating the release of captives is not like eating amala and ponmo at a motor park as Fayose does under the glare of cameras.

We owe the government of Sweden and the International Red Cross a debt of gratitude for negotiating the release of the 82 girls even if doubters say it was a ruse. One such person had asked, “If a captain was killed few days ago and other soldiers were killed and wounded, how could the same group that killed them release 82 girls?” Apparently there is so much that these nay sayers have to read up. It’s all there on the internet. Just google it. There is an unending stream of examples of hostage negotiation even with the most incorrigible terrorists.

According to a counter-terrorism expert, David Otto, “Switzerland representative played an active role in organising negotiations from within Nigeria and outside Nigeria along with local key actors like Barrister Zannah Mustapha and (human rights activist and lawyer) Asiha Wakil, who wield trust due to their pre-existing relationships with one or more factions of Boko Haram”.

Then Boko Haram released a video claiming to show the Chibok schoolgirl who refused to be rescued as part of the recent swap deal with the Nigerian government. The woman who claims to be Maida Yakubu, one of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014, is seen wearing a black veil and holding a gun. Flanked by three other women clad in black, she proclaims her loyalty to Boko Haram.

Would the doubters describe the video as fake, or say the girls are not in captivity? Diar-is-god- o!

Playing vile ethnic politics with the Boko Haram tragedy and deriding foreign governments helping in the mediation as Ayodele Fayose routinely does, is politics gone crazy. The Ekiti pestilence and his fellow doubters are permanently entrenched in the realm of ‘Trumposphere’, a delusional state (popularised by one Donald Trump) which fixates him in a subjective hole where his mantra is: “I Say, Therefore It Is”.