By Ugoji Egbujo
Chibok was a monumental national disaster. Cold horror instigated by religious extremism and lecherousness, savagely delivered. But that was not all. The other sacrilege was the presidency’s baffling indifference to that monstrosity .

The government’s tardy and ambivalent response to the disaster was perhaps more stupefying than the cruelty of the terrorists . How long would it take to resolve the issue of number of girls taken? Officials threw and discarded numbers with easy abandon. It was surreal. No movie script writer , in her wildest imagination , would have considered that in a certain country in west Africa, in 2014, it could take forever to ascertain number of girls missing after such an event.

Or could anyone have imagined that a president who received regular security briefings from a litany of intelligence agencies would, like many local beer parlour patrons, embrace barber shop rumours and refuse to believe the disappearance of the girls for many weeks. Breathtaking ignorance has allowed many in high places to remain skeptical of the reality of Chibok even till date.

Political distrust, mutual suspicions and mind numbing ineptitude seized government officials while blood thirsty depraved rebels possessed by sexual longings crept in and seized our girls. Young girls and their hopes were wrenched away and many families were left desolate and bereft . Men , women and children and communities were inflicted with shock and sorrow and crippling helplessness . Death with its finality and conclusiveness would perhaps be more tolerable for the bereaved families than this harrowing tragedy made extremely intolerable by its dubious quality of near indefiniteness and lingering lack of certainty.

Somehow we were collectively disappointing. How did they take away over two hundred and more girls and no one gave them a chase? When men were men, women and girls could only be taken after all the men had fallen. They must have used invariably slow moving trucks and lorries and must have driven hundreds of kilometers and could not have operated with any stealth. If some girls could jump off those slow moving trucks as some who managed to escape did , and the demons, delirious with the prospects of sexual orgies, looked away, how could we not arouse ourselves , intervene and stop the abduction?

Recriminations did not help us then and will not help us now, but Chibok is too scandalous , too catastrophic to be spared stringent and recurrent inquiries.

When the news broke , those saddled with the official responsibility to protect the girls struggled , not to find them but, to wish the tragedy away. A government regularly pilloried for being incapable of protecting citizens by the opposition fell prey to some mischievous hypotheses, wares of sycophants: the abduction was a charade choreographed to embarrass the president. And for some no abduction took place at all. Officials of the federal government gathered and shamelessly questions that suggested that the bereaved families had the responsibility of proving that their daughters were missing. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

While they were preoccupied with their delusions , the military held a press briefing and announced dismissively that the girls had been found. And a horror stricken world became bemused as puzzled Borno state government swiftly dismissed the military’s pronouncement. And the military , without compunction, recanted and hauled blames at school officials who in turn wondered how the military came by the erroneous information. And many who had been in shock now found themselves either fuming or thoroughly ashamed or speechless. Bumbling officials and self serving politicians turned serious national tragedy of grave implications into a circus show and Nigeria under the full glare of a pitying world became a spectacle of absurdities.

Many days after the incident , families had not been met by any officials and not even by the police or the military. Cynical federal government officials sneered and scowled at inquisitive pressmen in rather unpretentious attempts at expressing moral indignation. A derision perhaps borne out of the delusion that anyone convinced of the reality of the tragedy and expressing disgust at federal government’s clumsy halfhearted response must be acting in collusion with enemies of government who orchestrated the abduction to ridicule the government.

The BringBackOurGirls campaign fortunately gained global traction on social media and international concern and attention grew and news media crews began to arrive in great numbers. The government that had been in deliberate denial , jolted by weight of sudden international scrutiny , sought to deflect charges of irresponsibility by elaborate but hollow displays of interventions sinisterly aimed at exposing the abduction as a hoax.

So the president and his wife rather than go to Chibok to commiserate with grieving families and the state government inexplicably chose to remain in their palace in Abuja and summon officials of the school and Borno government and some members of the bereaved families.

We wouldn’t know why the president and his wife chose to play the role of criminal interrogators but we know that they were playing unhelpful politics. Replete with gaffes, the federal government, struggling with a dwindling public confidence had transformed the rejection of responsibility and deflection of blames into state policy. And the resort to publicly attributing problems and failings to the workings of real and imagined detractors had been over used.

So when the First lady, amiable but lacking finesse and tact and sense of propriety, took center stage and started interrogating officials in full glare of the media, I knew that the Chibok drama had yet another high point. Like a mother hen out to protect her ‘harassed’ chicks , the first lady dropped etiquette and in unmistakably emotion laden terms charged at her husband’s perceived enemies. She left many believing her loud cries and profuse tears were contrived to attract political sympathy for her husband rather than show any deeply felt sorrow for those affected by the tragedy. And that further depleted public confidence . And the legitimacy of any government would be undermined if it fiddled while the nation convulsed.

If the government came around and accepted that the girls were missing and had to be found , why did they continue to antagonize news agencies that showed merest of concerns for the girls? Ministers and ambassadors , in their responses to inquiries, betrayed an impatience that portrayed them as clueless but pompously disdainful of genuine criticisms. And you couldn’t fail to sniff some sense of perverted moral indignation in their responses and gestures. The presidency somehow struggled to become the victim of the Chibok disaster. Okonjo Iweala once lost her cool and asked a foreign news crew “ why is it always about Chibok girls?”. The same Okonjo Iweala who had so much time months later to dramatize her concern for the Charlie Hebdo tragedy victims. And while she could proudly say ‘Je suis Charlie’ , she could not hide her disgust when she had to pose for a photograph with a ‘BBOG’ sign.

When they weren’t bashing Jim Clancy and Aisha Sessay of the CNN for what they perceived as meddlesomness they were disparaging Ezekwesili and BBOG campaigners as self serving unscrupulous opportunists intent on milking publicity for selfish reasons. And the security agencies would devote resources to harass campaigners but leave Sambisa forest undisturbed. And you wonder whether the energies dissipated creating and attacking phantom opponents couldn’t have been better deployed tackling definitive enemies in boko haram. How did politics manage to blind many to the woes and torment of the affected families? How couldn’t the plight of the girls in satan’s captivity evoke genuine emotions in many?

In a region that is comparatively economically and educational backward . In a region where school enrollment and completion rates are pathetic. In a region where the culture of polygamy and early childhood marriages and restrictive conservative practices against women have combined to keep women subjugated. In a region where women have the greatest impact on raising children and catering for family sub units and ultimately the society. In a region where any serious developmental efforts must therefore focus on girl child education and prioritize women empowerment. In such a region, a tragedy of Chibok’s quality must be a disaster of wide ramifications and grave implications.

We lost girls , we lost college girls, cherished species who were destined to impact their society. But we lost more. Parents often have to be cajoled into sending girls to school in many parts of the north. The progress made in dismantling this cultural barrier may be negatively impacted by the Chibok disaster and any reversal in female school enrollment trends will have long standing socioeconomic consequences. Girl child education must be boosted rather than stultified by Chibok. And the incoming Government must study the Chibok disaster and learn its many lessons

Chibok is a picture of governance gone wrong in many avoidable ways.

In the event of a tragedy, there must be an adequate immediate emergency response. Such responses leave people feeling more secure. The military’s response in the immediate aftermath must be examined. It is a given that governments would manage information dissemination but it is also true that the more open and honest the government is with the people the higher the degree of public confidence in government and its communications. And with confidence comes trust and support. When a government fails to communicate effectively the vacuum created is inevitably filled often by wild speculations and damaging rumours.

It is difficult to know the quality and quantity of intelligence the president receives. Chibok perhaps revealed that presidential intelligence was insufficient and or unreliable. Otherwise the presidency would have to be utterly irresponsible to have embraced speculation as it shamefully did. How did the government , without any tangible evidence, believe the ruse that Borno government arranged the disappearance of mostly christian girls to embarrass the government? And while it may be tempting for officials to usurp the functions of others, criminal investigations must always be left for agencies delegated by the constitution to perform such roles. Because the integrity of investigations is never helped by the involvement of politicians.

Positive symbolic leadership always helps. The president failed to visit Chibok . When the families felt psychologically battered and the community was wrecked and the soldiers dispirited , a presidential visit would have given some life to all and may have yielded alternative and better outcomes. To summon such a mourning community to Abuja was to say the least atrocious. Was it not also shameful that it took that teenager Malala Yusoufzai to extract a pledge from our president to see the bereaved families?

The natural habitat of sycophants are places of power. And that they will always seek to convince those in power that all critics and dissenters are enemies. Ezekwesili and BBOG campaigners became government enemies for insisting that the girls be found. Borno state governor may have urged WAEC officials to keep the school open but that in no way justified the suspicions and accusations.

The government must make bringing back the girls a priority. The families need a closure.

Bring Back Our Girls!