It
means a lot to Nigeria’s president that the world stops protesting and
requiring it of him and the security service to rescue over 200 girls
abducted since mid April this year. President Goodluck Jonathan appears
more and more everyday to simply wish this could just go away and
everyone forget these poor girls in Sambisa forest; after all, ‘they are
not the first to have been kidnapped and forgotten with Boko Haram and
they are not likely to be the last during his administration, so why all
the hullabaloo?’
To this end, the government of Nigeria has
invested billions; it can be imagined, in an eleventh hour campaign to
transform the face of the Nigerian protest. Nigeria’s president has been
advised to invest in attempting to use #ReleaseOurGirls to replace
#BringBackOurGirls, which has been perhaps the most viral and globally
participated hashtag protest of all times, with public figures including
Michelle Obama, the United States president’s wife prominently and
passionately getting publicly involved.
Why is the president of
Nigeria being advised and investing so much in fighting to transform
#BringBackOurGirls to #ReleaseOurGirls. Is there so much in a ‘mere’
name and a hashtag?
A week after the abduction, Nigeria’s
president constituted a Chibok committee to look into the case of the
abducted girls. What the role of this committee is in this security
matter is left to speculation. Almost two months after the abduction,
the committee is yet to visit Chibok. Is it this committee that advised
the rebranding of the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign to #Release Our
Girls Boko Haram? If so, then what is the thinking of this committee
and how does this rebranding assist the plight of the missing girls?
#BringBackOurGirls
puts pressure on the Nigerian and international security departments to
ramp up efforts and harness all equipment and skills at their disposal,
to rescue the abductees. #Release Our Girls however reads as a position
of surrender and resignation. #Release Our Girls is a message for one
ear and one ear alone, that of the terrorists. When a nation hires
miscreants to protest and cry for terrorists to have mercy; what image
does this portray? A nation on its knees?
If the entire nation
joined the #ReleaseOurGirls campaign, in what way will this plea affect
Boko Haram or the desperate predicament of our abducted girls? Has a
begging nation ever touched a terrorist’s heart? If not so then why
would the Chibok committee and all other advisers of the Nigerian
president further humiliate him and his plight and the plight of the
nation as a whole with this meaningless counter-campaign?
Are
Nigeria’s president’s advisers not aware that the world is watching and
noticed how his government initially challenged and denied the
abduction, then lied, as the Economist candidly put it, that Nigeria’s
security agents had rescued all but eight girls; and when this was
humiliatingly exposed, now employ all tactics of intimidation,
harassment, diversion and terrorist begging as avoidance strategies in
the face of embarrassing terror and terror response?
#ReleaseOurGirls
is really a reason for concern. Is there any sensible reason why money
that could be used to aid the hunt for the missing girls and to console
and rehabilitate the people of Chibok is being wasted in sponsoring a
humiliating, violent counter campaign?
The entire world is watching. Seriously, the obvious #ReleaseOurGirls distraction is not a good look, Goodluck.
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