By Denrele Animasaun

“We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.” — Mary McLeod Bethune

There is a saying that “a society is measured by the way it treats its weakest members”. In the eyes of the world, Nigerian society lacks compassion in the way we treat our young and the vulnerable. We, I mean the Nigerian society, has failed our young people spectacularly. We have let them down badly. This is not the time to sugar coat and I do not sugar coat, I have always called it as I see it.

This is not the time either to gloat but to stand shoulder to shoulder with parents and the relatives of the missing girls.

First, as a parent myself, and as a concerned Nigerian, I  am with the concerned Nigerians and decent people  of the world, who are praying  for the safe return  of our girls and  I am registering  my frustration of the lackluster attempt  of  the  federal  government to find the  girls  and  return them  safely  to their  parents and  their community.

I am appalled and I despair that this government do not show proper leadership and commitment for the safe return of the girls.  This is not the first time, and it seems sadly, not going to be the last time. It seems that the life of a Nigerian means so very little.

Every single day that the girls are missing spells dire consequences to their safety and it has been going on for such a long time. It is apparent for all to see that our government does not value the lives of Nigerians.

These young girls deserved protection rather they were exposed to danger. The intelligence  is  there for the so-called forces to explore and extrapolate : these murderous  marauders busted  into  their school on April 14, snatched the girls and took them  onto trucks and made away without any  resistance  from the authorities and made  for  the  hills in  a  convoy  of  trucks flanked  by numerous motorcycles into the remote, hilly, rough terrain of a known jungle hideout of Boko Haram in Bornu State.

Around 40 girls escaped early on and their harrowing account does confirm that their captors are indeed the Boko Haram. In  the midst of pending  danger, these courageous  girls aged about 18 years( they are mostly  from Christian families) went  to school to be educated ,with the  hope to  improve their lives and that of  their  families.

We can only imagine the pain and torture the families of the girls are going through these past weeks and the government continues to meander and shilly-shally aimlessly.

You would expect any decent and capable government would have put all the available resources to ensure that the girls are found and returned to their families, no, not ours.

Everything this  government  has done  has been a shamble from  start  to  finish; the  guards that were  meant  to be  by girls school were absent on  the day  of  the  abduction, there  were no task force established to pursue the criminals despite numerous intelligence about  the directions of the  abductors.

They have been instead confusion and misinformation about the number of girls abducted and the FALSE HEROICS of the army securing the release of some of the   girls. The parents of the missing girls have decried the government estimates as inaccurate and that more than double the government’s stated number are actually missing.

It is a bit late for the information minister, Labaran Maku, to come out now to describe the abductions as “a national tragedy” and is now insisting that the state security forces are “on the heels of these kidnappers. This is not the time for empty rhetoric but sound facts and commitment.

The President  should drop  everything  and lead his armed forces and intelligence in time of this national crisis, and sadly, he  leaves this to  his  gutless spin-doctors and lieutenants to  inform  the nation of  his government‘s progress or lack of.

It is very sad and the rest of the world is looking at such debacle. There is  no  word  to describe the incompetence and  mediocrity of our  leaders and the  people on top but, they are lame ducks incapable of leading our  people in time  of plenty or time of  crisis.

One of  the  parents of the abducted  girls , Her 17-year-old daughter, Ruth, an art student at Chibok Government Girls’ Secondary School, said she was about to sit for exams. Mrs Rahila Bitrus talked of her family’s anguish and accused the Nigerian government of failing to act fast enough.

“They’d assured us they would rescue our children but today, its 11 days since the abductions and we still haven’t seen our daughters”, she said. “We are going through the very worst moment of our lives”.

Wole Soyinka has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to convene an emergency security meeting over what he described as this “ugly development.”  And on Tuesday, the White House branded the abductions “an abomination.”

Every parent, every girl and every Nigerian home and abroad should demand and pressure the government to do everything that it can to secure the girls’ release.
On Wednesday, the government announced publicly for the first time that it had officially engaged the services of a negotiator.

Former UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and other human rights activists expressed the widely-held fear that the girls could already be imprisoned in unreachable bush camps and held for years to be used as sex slaves.

The UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said of the development: “The appalling abduction in northern Nigeria on 14 April is a stark reminder of the threat of sexual violence faced by women and girls in conflict-zone areas. I am very concerned that the majority of the girls are still missing.”

The Nigerian military’s search and rescue operation has itself been the target of growing public alarm. There have been state of emergency legislation in three northern states, including Borno, yet the security forces failed abysmally to act decisively.

This is worrying as the Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau had threaten to capture women and girls as slaves in a video released as far back as May 2013.  And no action or contingency plans were made.

Ms Shekarau, who is President of the International Federation of Women Lawyers Nigeria, said civil society groups felt powerless in the face of deep-seated public mistrust of the federal government’s rescue efforts. “Eleven days have gone by and we still have no information about the whereabouts of these girls,” she said.

It seems that we cannot rely on our government to protect and serve us. If this is the case, we should be reaching out and seeking international assistance to resolve this growing helplessness.

It is about time our government admit that it is not fit for the purpose and incapable of acting in the best interest of ordinary Nigerians,
The British foreign office has since confirmed  that it had offered support to Nigeria to help find the girls, but gave no details of what it might do – or whether the offer had been accepted.

“There is no doubt our nation is at war,” Senate President David Mark told parliament on Tuesday, calling for Nigerians to unite against the Islamists.
If the world can search for a missing Malaysian (airliner), why can’t the president ask them to help look for these children?