Even as I write this, there is a painful lump in my chest. It has been two years that our #ChibokGirls have been in captivity. I just imagine that the #ChibokParents die a thousand deaths every day thinking of the atrocities being met upon their daughters. Daughters they sent to school to get an education so that they can better their lives.
For two years now the Chibok parents have had to second guess their decision to send their children to school. A story of one of the Chibok mothers broke my heart. She managed to send her daughter to school after she lost her husband, and now she feels she was selfish for wanting her daughter to be educated and be able to help her one day.
What has happened to the Chibok Girls is heartbreaking, and too painful for words. Nothing makes sense to me anymore.
I have put off writing this. It is difficult to acknowledge and accept the fact that our Chibok Girls have spent two years in captivity. With a bleeding heart, I am forced to accept the reality on ground. Our Chibok Girls have been in captivity for 731 days – exactly 2 years, today.
Where is the outrage the world showed two years ago when 276 schoolgirls were abducted from their school where they were writing their final exam? Where is the outrage the world showed when 57 girls had to use various dangerous means to escape? Where is the outrage the world showed when we heard that 219 Chibok Girls were in captivity? Unfortunately, they are still in captivity, exactly two years today.
How can the world move on? The Chibok Girls have not been able to move on from the nightmare – not for a moment. They have feared for their lives every second, every minute, every hour, every day for two years.
Where are all the world leaders that promised to help rescue the Chibok Girls? Where are the celebrities that held the sign that said #BringBackOurGirls? The 219 Chibok Girls have not been rescued. Not a single one has been brought back home. Why the silence?
How can we tell the girl child to dare to dream? To aspire? To get an education? How can we tell her this when 219 of her sisters that went to school have been in captivity for two years? What moral justification do we have to ask a child to go to school?
By failing Chibok Girls, we have failed our own children, wherever they are. They wonder in their minds if they would also be silent if they were the ones taken.
We have continuously asked what is the crime of the Chibok Girl? Is it because she is poor? Is it because she dared to get an education? Or is it because she is a Nigerian? Would there have been more outrage and sustained effort to ensure she is rescued if she was from another part of the world?
I think of the Chibok Girls all the time. The horrific tales from those who have escaped or have been rescued have not been palatable. What has become of the girls who one day were laughing and being just girls and the next day were forced into a nightmarish world of being women forced to leave their homes and all that they hold dear?
Do the Chibok Girls even realise that they have spent two years in captivity? Do the Chibok Girls still hope that they will be rescued or will find their way home? Do the terrorists mock our girls, telling them that nobody will come for them? How do our girls cope with the fact that nobody has rescued them? Do our girls still hold onto hope? Indeed #HopeEndures but for how long can a child hold onto hope when they are being brutalised each day?
If your daughter was one of the Chibok Girls, what would you do? Have you done the same for the Chibok Girls? A terrorist attack against one is a terrorist attack against all. As long as one is attacked, we all are attacked. We have to fight for each other. When we do nothing, we simply embolden the enemy to keep attacking us. When it happens to another and we stand up for them, the enemy backs off.
It has been 731 days since the Chibok Girls have been abducted, and it has been 716 days that citizens have been demanding their rescue. We have made a vow that we will not stop – not until our girls are back and alive, and #NotWithoutOurDaughters.
We might not have carried the Chibok Girls in our womb, but they are our daughters. We will continue to make demands for their rescue until each and every one is accounted for.
Whatever anyone may think, standing for Chibok Girls is not doing them a favour. It is simply doing the right thing. Rescue for the Chibok Girls is not a privilege, but their right, per the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
World leaders must look at the Chibok Girls as their own. They must adopt them and fight for them as if they were theirs. The Chibok Girls are no longer children of the people from Chibok, neither are they just Nigerian daughters. The Chibok Girls are children of the world, and, therefore, the world must rally together and rescue its daughters from these monsters. These are beings who want to put a blight on humanity. We will hold on to hope knowing that the power of love will always defeat the hatred in them.
We will not allow a group of terrorists to define humanity for us.
The fight for the Chibok Girls is the fight for the soul of humanity. As long as 219 Chibok Girls are in captivity, humanity is in captivity.
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Aisha Yesufu in Nigeria.
(All photos courtesy of Aisha Yesufu. #2YearsOn image courtesy of #BringBackOurGirls. )
Aisha, my heart bleeds along with yours. I live in South Africa and we still get updates. Did you see this report?
A schoolmate, Saa, says she cried with joy when she saw a Boko Haram video appearing to show some of Nigeria’s kidnapped Chibok girls, with images of tearful mothers recognising their daughters who have not been heard from since the mass abduction by the Islamic extremists two years ago.
“The moment I saw them and recognised their faces – Saratu Ayuba, Jummai Mutah, and Kwazigu Hamman – I started crying, with tears of joy rolling down from my eyes, thanking God for their lives,” she says.
The young woman, who now calls herself Saa and is going to college in the United States, was among several dozen who escaped, jumping down from the back of an open truck after Boko Haram had kidnapped them. The extremists seized 276 girls who had gathered for science exams at the Government Girls Secondary School in the northeast town of Chibok. There are 219 still missing.
Saa spoke in a statement through the Education Must Continue Initiative, a Washington-based project started by Nigerian Emmanuel Ogede, which is sponsoring the education of Saa and nine other students who escaped.
“Seeing them gives me the courage to tell the world today that we should not lose hope,” Saa said. “Let’s keep praying and campaigning for #BringBackOurGirls. I want the world to raise their voice. Let’s not stop until the government hears us and does something about it.”
On Wednesday, CNN aired the video, believed to have been made in December, of girls wearing the Islamic hijab, and of one mother reaching out to a computer screen as she recognises her daughter.
“My Saratu,” she wails, before breaking down in sobs. She says Saratu was 15 when she was kidnapped and now is 17.
The video
The video shows 15 of the girls – one with a mischievous grin, one looking uncompromising, downright defiant, and one downcast. One can feel the pain that shows in the eyes of many of them. They give the date as Christmas, 25 December 2015.
While Boko Haram is thought to have abducted thousands of people over the years, the mass abduction brought the extremist group to the world’s attention. The campaign hashtag #BringBackOurGirls went as far as the White House, used by U.S. first lady Michelle Obama.
The failure of Nigerian officials and the military to rescue the girls brought international condemnation and contributed to President Goodluck Jonathan’s loss in elections last year.
Jonathan at first had denied there had been a mass abduction, but international pressure soon forced him to accept help from other countries.
The United States, Britain and France were among those that sent advisers, including hostage negotiators. U.S. and British drones located at least one group of about 80 of the girls, which was reported to Nigeria’s government and military, but nothing was done.
Andrew Pocock, who was British high commissioner to Nigeria until his retirement last year, told The Sunday Times Magazine last month that it was considered too dangerous to the other girls to attempt a ground or air rescue. “You might have rescued a few, but many would have been killed. … You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” the magazine quoted him as saying.
Nigeria’s military has cited the same fears. Yet that has not stopped them from attacking towns and villages where Boko Haram has held thousands of civilians captive. The military boasted last week that soldiers have rescued 11 595 civilian hostages since February 26.
But none are from Chibok
CNN reported that the “proof of life” video was sent in December to negotiators trying to free the girls. It shows an interview with Information Minister Lai Mohammed saying the government is reviewing and assessing the video.
Senator Shehu Sani, who has been involved in past negotiations with Boko Haram about the Chibok girls, told The Associated Press he found the video credible. Yakubu Nkeki, leader of a support group of parents of the kidnapped girls, said he briefly saw part of the CNN video, in between the frequent power blackouts in Nigeria, and recognised some of the girls.
“We are all well,” one of the girls says in the video, emphasising the “all.” There have been fears that Boko Haram’s increasing use of female children and adults to carry out suicide bombings indicates they are turning their captives, including the Chibok girls, into weapons.
The video ends with one of the girls appealing to Nigeria’s government to meet unspecified promises
There’s been no word of the girls since May 2014, when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said they had converted to Islam and threatened to sell them into slavery or forced marriage with his fighters. Many recently freed girls are pregnant.
Two of the mothers and 16 fathers have died since the mass abduction, some of them victims of Boko Haram attacks. Others died from illnesses blamed on stress, according to Nkeki, who spoke to the AP by phone from Chibok.
Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is due in Chibok on Thursday for the anniversary of the kidnappings, Nkeki said, complaining that the issue has become politicised. He said the community is angry that their only school remains in the ruins created by Boko Haram, which firebombed buildings as they took off with the girls.
Some 20 000 children in the town and its surroundings have no school to attend, he said on Thursday, as parents started gathering at the school to pray for the safe return of their daughters.
“Boko Haram has achieved its aim. They say they don’t want us to have Western education and our children don’t,” Nkeki said.