By Rotimi Fasan
IN a few days time it would be three full months since nearly 300 or perhaps more girls were brazenly abducted from their school in Chibok in Borno State. In the last three months a lot of tears have been shed. Homes have been ripped apart and sorrow has overtaken the hearts of many.

One only needs to put oneself in the place of the parents and other loved ones of these abducted girls to begin to have a sense, not feel, the wrenching pain the abduction must have inflicted on the hearts of the affected families.

In the first few weeks after the abduction, so much was said and written about the girls as to attract world attention. This attention from the world put the Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan in the court of the people of Nigeria and the rest of the world. The government knew its back was against the wall as it tried to defend its shiftless conduct in the face of this brutal assault on our collective sensibility.

Although the abduction had happened several weeks before world attention was focused on it but it didn’t get as much as a grunt from President Jonathan. Neither his body language nor public posture gave any hint of his concern. It all looked to him like a set-up by his ever troublesome opponents.

One would have expected some show of presidential interest in the matter even if everything finally turns out to be false. But for President Jonathan everything seemed to have taken on the colour of politics. He therefore didn’t see any reason to be bothered. And so it was that he kept his quiet in the face of the whimpers and cries of the parents who bear the pain of the abduction and the rest of outraged Nigerians who share this pain.

But after the government was forced to speak out, to make clear its plan for the return of the girls, there was some hope that something good might come out of it all. This hope changed to expectation after some foreign powers offered to help the Jonathan team in tracking the girls. No sooner was this done than some senior officials of the government and the military, notably Alex Badeh, the Chief of Defence Staff, let it out that they knew where the girls were being kept.

As if they had perfected plans for returning the girls, these senior government officials continued with their chest-thumping remarks that suggested Nigerians, especially the families of these unlucky girls, had nothing more to worry about. Even though some of us questioned the wisdom, not to say the professional logic, of statements such as Badeh’s on efforts being made to return these girls, we were prepared to see the military keep their words.

Rather than do this what followed was a clampdown on the press. Newspaper-carrying vans were seized while military personnel set upon journalists and other vocal elements in the campaign to bring back the abducted girls. Those of them in Abuja under the leadership of Mrs. Uwais and Oby Ezekwesili were tear-gassed by the police and banned by Joseph Mbu from keeping their daily campaign in the city. In hindsight, one can now say that these moves against the campaigners and others who have criticised the Jonathan government’s handling of the abduction were meant to silence the campaign for the return of the girls.

This point has become clear now that very little is now being heard on the issue. This government by its do-nothing attitude seems to have ridden the tide of criticisms that were the aftermath of the campaign that galvanised the world into asking questions of the Jonathan administration.

The spin masters of Abuja must by now be congratulating themselves for staying the course of ineptitude despite the criticism of the world. But with or without world attention Nigerians must never cease to ask questions, and indeed keep up the campaign to see to the successful return of these girls. This is our business and the world can only follow the lead we provide. On this issue sympathisers cannot and must not be expected to cry more than the bereaved.

We must continue to ask if this is how Dr. Jonathan would look on as marauders take over the territory over which he presides as President and Commander-in-Chief. It is not enough for the President to claim to be doing something on the girls return. He must be seen to be doing something.

Several more abductions have happened since the Chibok girls shame. More explosives and bombs have been detonated in different parts of the North East and other parts of the North. More villages and towns have been sacked and many more Nigerians have been sent to their untimely deaths by these agents of terror who now rob, rape, abduct and kill defenceless Nigerians on a daily basis. So confident of success are they that they write to their victims weeks ahead of their unwelcome visits. Yet nothing happens to stop them.

To accept that Nigerians continue to live under this climate of fear, terror and uncertainty is to accept that nothing should be done about the Chibok school girls. It is to see their fate as a fait accompli. The routine abductions and murders that now characterise life in different parts of Nigeria where terrorists have overrun legitimate authorities is no reason for us to accept the fate of the Chibok girls as one we cannot do anything about. As it is, those with the responsibility and means to act on the matter have yet to wake up to the reality of that fact, to say nothing of their knowing what to do.

President Jonathan recently gave the impression that he was hard on the case of the Chibok girls even if he was not talking much about it. While paying lip service to the issue or shedding crocodile tears is not the way to bring back the girls, the President must be heard and be seen to be doing something about it.

We must put ourselves in the shoes of these girls and try to have a sense of their condition. What has happened to them can happen to any of us. And what the attitude of the Jonathan government is telling us all is that any one of us could go the way of the girls without anybody, least of all the Nigerian government, giving ‘a damn’, to quote the President own words in a related context. But it is the way of civilised people to give a damn in a matter such as this. And we must insist on the return of the Chibok school girls. Shikena!