By Rotimi Fasan
AFTER nearly a year from their homes and families, there were intimations a few days ago that the school girls of Chibok might after all be well and alive. This heart warming news which I initially took with cautious optimism first came to me via online media.

While I was full of hope that these girls might somehow return home at some point, I was equally cautious of the authenticity of the report. This should not be surprising to anyone familiar with what passes for news in the cyber space in these times of politics and election. Anyone could have put the report out there in order to score some obscure political point. But a day or two after the initial report, I finally saw an interview of a lady (not one of the girls) on CNN recounting her encounter with 24 of the girls.

A captive of the insurgents herself, she had escaped from one of the camps in which she had been held with the girls having walked for days to the nearest village and lost her new born baby in the process. Her account which was translated to English from Hausa, told of how terribly homesick the Chibok girls were. This is only natural for young girls who were wrenched from the familiarity of their school and homes into the strange ambience of a forest. The escapee also confirmed the long held opinion that the girls had been divided into smaller groups. Which is to be expected if their abductors are to move them about conveniently.

But what this report does is to give hope anew after many Nigerians have despaired of the girls ever returning home again. The report would also be most welcome by the families of the girls who cannot but hope for the best. Although the escapee lady saw only 24 of the girls, there is the probability that the others are well and in good health too.

Hope should therefore be kept alive. The only thing is that such hope will now be mixed with fear that nothing awful happens to the girls now that the Nigerian military with its regional allies are claiming to storm Sambisa forest in a bid to push the insurgents out from their hideouts. It was such fear of the collateral damage that could come from the military invading the forest that had made many Nigerians a bit wary of supporting such a move.

But having waited for nearly a year without things improving (indeed far more girls and women have been abducted in the wake of the Chibok abductions), it had become clear that something drastic had to be done.

Even at that, the best efforts of the Nigerian military amounted to mere excuses. Our soldiers were being roundly beaten by the insurgents where many of them were not actively sabotaging their own effort. A soldiery once famous for its discipline had become quite weak and in disarray.

The soldiers were easily outgunned and chased off the battle field by better equipped insurgents determined to impose their will on a cowed population abandoned to their fate by a government whose attitude spoke of a shameful lack of will and indifference.

Indeed, indifference best describes the response of the Goodluck Jonathan administration to the fate of the Chibok girls. For nearly three months after the girls were first abducted last April, the government could not bring itself to accept that something that dreadful had happened. Rather than see the matter for the calamity that it was, the Jonathan administration was content to read politics into it and dismiss it all as an attempt to paint it in a bad light.

But when the rest of the world got interested in the matter and took up the campaign for the rescue of the girls, only then did the government thought it fit to respond rather half-heartedly to the situation. The military came up with the bare-faced lie that the girls had been rescued only to recant in the face of mounting evidence that no such thing had happened. Rather than take the front seat in the campaign to bring back the girls, President Jonathan spent his time at campaign grounds meant to return him to an office many doubt he is prepared for having failed to effectively discharge his remit.

It was only in the heat of the recent campaigns for the presidential election that the president would deem it fit to travel close to the north-east region where the insurgents have all but taken over complete control. He did this also for political reasons- in order to win votes.

Although he commiserate with the government and people of France over the loss of a few of their citizens during the Charlie Hebdo attacks, President Jonathan did not see the terrorist attack in Kano as weighty enough to prevent him from going to a campaign rally. He had, as president, all but abandoned the Chibok girls to their fate. Nigerians can therefore imagine the irony when the very administration that had failed to provide any meaningful answer to the question of how to bring back the school girls of Chibok or counter the activities of insurgents would cite security reasons for the postponement of an election the president seemed poised to lose.

The Nigerian military whose commanders appeared to have been in a long period of hibernation suddenly woke up from slumber and swore to do in six weeks what it had failed to do in six years. Whether this is something the government can accomplish remains to be seen but, head or tail, this government cannot escape the charge of playing politics with the misery of others. If it fails to smoke out the insurgents before March 28 nobody would be surprised as it had failed to do so in six years. If on the other hand it succeeds, then those who accuse it of indifference and lack of will to take on the insurgents before now would have been proven right. Either way the government loses.

The worst loss however is the heartbreak that the administration would be visiting on the families of the Chibok girls if, as a consequence of its ongoing operation in the north-east, the girls are not returned home safely. For having failed to act before now, some of the families of these girls have come to some closure about the fate of the girls. But the report that 24 of them have been sighted gives hope that many if not all of them might still be alive. For the sake of the girls, Nigerians may be willing to forgive the self-serving shift in the date of the 2015 elections. Bring them back now!