by Aisha Yesufu | Apr 14, 2016 | 2016, Africa, Awareness, Girls, Nigeria, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
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. )
by Aisha Yesufu | Dec 26, 2015 | 2015, Africa, Nigeria, World Motherhood
Chibok Girls Remain in Captivity
Hmmmmm…today is Christmas, as I write this, and for many all over the world it’s time for félicitation, a time for merriment and sharing. But for our Chibok girls and their families, it’s time to wail and cry silently, while putting up a brave face for the whole world.
Freedom of worship is what a lot of us take for granted. A confirmed right, but for our #ChibokGirls, alas, it is not so. Most of them we heard have been converted to Islam. Islam doesn’t need forced converts. There is no compulsion in religion says God in Qur’an Chapter 2 verse 256.
Why, then, would someone take girls, who, even in the rules of war islamically, are never to be attacked? And forcefully convert them to Islam?
World Mom, Aisha Yesufu, speaks as activists gather in Abuja continuing to demand the rescue of the 219 Chibok Girls captured in April 2013 in Nigeria.
While others enjoy Christmas, our Chibok girls are weeping silently in their hearts. They probably do not even know that today is Christmas. That would be the worst.
For 620 days our Chibok girls have been in captivity. Mocked by their captors that no one would come, and, indeed, no one did.
Our Chibok girls have had to spend another Christmas in captivity, while the world moved on and forgets that 620 days ago the lives of 219 Chibok girls were frozen in a nightmare they never envisioned. They were captured by Boko Haram when they set out to get an education. Young, educated girls, whose empowered voice the terrorists found threatening.
For daring to have a mind of their own by getting an education, they have been put in bondage for 620 days.
How are Chibok parents faring during this day of festivities knowing that their precious daughters are with monsters who have no drop of humanity in them?
How do they cope thinking of all the atrocities their daughters have had to endure this past 620 days? Ahhhhh…they must die a thousand deaths everyday imagining what their daughters have had to go through.
While many in the world are waking up today after celebrating Christmas with their family and friends, please remember the 219 #ChibokGirls who spent their second Christmas away from their loved ones and in captivity.
Please remember #ChibokParents who have had to celebrate a second Christmas without their daughters and struggle to put on a brave face for the other children. All so that the terrorists would not steal the joy of the season from their children the way in which they stole their daughters.
#BringBackOurGirls NOW & ALIVE
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by World Mom, Aisha Yesufu in Nigeria.
Photo credits to the author.
by Aisha Yesufu | Apr 14, 2015 | 2015, Africa, Awareness, Education, Girl Child, Girls, Global Citizenship, Government, Grief, Human Rights, Humanitarian, International, News, Nigeria, World Moms Blog, World Voice
365DaysOn the Chibok Girls are never to be forgotten.
It is 365 days today that the Chibok Girls were abducted. Exactly one year ago on 14th April 2014 276 Chibok School Girls were abducted from their school. I just cannot believe the fact that we actually allowed it to get to one year without the rescue of our #chibokGirls. How could we allow innocent children be taken away by terrorist group and do nothing. The #ChibokGirls ought not to have been taken in the first place. They were supposed to be protected to enjoy their Childhood and their innocence. We failed to protect them and also failed in the next best thing which would have been their immediate rescue. How can we live with ourselves? How do we live with our consciences? How do we face ourselves in the mirror knowing fully well that we abandoned 219 #ChibokGirls and left them with the terrorists.
What is the crime of #ChibokGirls? Is it because she is Nigerian? Is it because she is poor? Or is it because she dared to be educated? #ChibokGirls against all odds dared to be educated and on April 14th 2014 they paid for daring. A group of armed terrorists entered their school and abducted 276 of them from their school in Chibok. 57 of them escaped on their own and there are still 219 of them still with the abductors for a year today, and not a single one has been rescued. The armed terrorists group known as Boko Haram, literarily meaning that western education is forbidden, have vowed to get schools closed down and seem to be succeeding. For some children in the North Eastern States of Nigeria education has become truly forbidden as schools in some parts have been closed for over a year.
The #ChibokGirls were writing their Final year examination after which those who passed would be able to secure admission into University. A beacon of hope for their families. Schools had been closed down in neighbouring towns and a lot of parents sent their children to be able to complete their secondary school education in Chibok.
There had been series of attacks within some neighbouring villages and yet the #ChibokGirls went to school. Even those who were not boarders went to stay in school because there was electricity there and they wanted to have a place to read for their exams. Sheer determination to get an education which they knew would be their key to breaking the shackles of poverty. For the #ChibokGirl education meant everything. It was the path that could lead to an end to the vicious cycle of poverty. Like one of the #ChibokMothers said to us when we invited them to one of the Sit Outs we had, said her daughter had promised to go to school to get an education and wipe away her tears. The mother asked us; “If my daughter is in the hands of terrorist how she will wipe away my tears?
For most of these parents their children are everything, including a future source of livelihood. What makes the #ChibokGirls issue so saddening is that a lot of children, especially the Girl-Child from the region of Nigeria they come from, hardly ever go to school. They are the most educationally disadvantaged and it takes a lot to get them to school, especially the girls.
One of the #ChibokFathers put it this way: ‘The government fines us if we do not send our children to school. Now that our children have been abducted while in school who will fine the government?’ A #ChibokFather wept at the Unity Fountain in Abuja where we have the daily Sit Out to demand for the rescue of our #ChibokGirls when he told us the story of how his daughter was driven home because she had not paid 300 Naira (Less than 2 Dollars) for testimonial. He struggled for days to get the 300 Naira and when he was able to, he took her back to the school only for her to be abducted the very next day. I ask again! What is the crime of the #ChibokGirl? Is it because she is Nigerian? Is it because she is poor or is it because she dared to be educated?
If these are crimes many of us would be guilty. I grew up poor in an environment where education was not seen as important.
I went to school in the morning without breakfast and came back home without expecting lunch.By the time I was aged 11, I had no friends to play with because they were all married off. I was taunted and ridiculed and what kept me going was the thought that if I am able to get an education I would one day be able to ride a car and escape the life of poverty I was born into. At the age of 24 when I got married my friends were grandparents, and by the time I turned 40 they had become great grand parents.
Anytime I think of the fact that if I was taken when I was writing my exams my parents would have been unable to speak out for me because poverty had rendered them voiceless, and if nobody else stood for me where would I be today? Probably dead! With that in mind I can never give up on the #ChibokGirls because to give up on them is to give up on the who I was 24 years ago.
The #ChibokGirls with all the disadvantage they were born with decided that they would dare to take themselves out of the station that they were born into, and for daring to dream have been with abductors for a year. The world seems to have turned its back on the #ChibokGirls. The world seems to move on after the initial flurry of activity with the world saying #BringBackOur Girls. It was glamorous for people to hold the banner and say #BringBackOurGirls in the early days. People have moved on with their lives but for the #ChibokGirls and their families there is no moving on, not for a second for 365 days. Today it is exactly one year. My daughter has volunteered to be a #ChibokGirl Ambassador who would stand for the voiceless #ChibokGirls here in Abuja, and make demands that the government rescues the #ChibokGirls. This is what she had to say:
I see my parents every day and I feel guilty because 219 school girls haven’t seen their parents for one whole year. They live in fear of not knowing what is going to happen next whether they would live to see the next second, the next minute, the next hour, the next day. They have lost all hope especially in their country.
I feel sad that I live in a country, where 219 girls would be abducted and kept in captivity for 365 days and yet nothing is done, yet no attempt is made to rescue them, and everyone just moves on as if nothing ever happened. Why? They are kept in the hands of monsters that go around killing people and think they are practicing Islam, but Islam is a religion of peace not violence.
What if it were I that was abducted will everyone just move on and forget about me.
Bring Back Our Girls Now And Alive.
As long as the #ChibokGirls are left with abductors we have failed the children of the world especially the Girl-Child whom we tell is important and that she should dare to dream. Action, they say, speaks louder than words. The Girl-Child knows that it is all a lie because she can see the #ChibokGirls who dared and what happened to them.
By failing to rescue the #ChibokGirls we have failed children all over the world. We have allowed terror be what they go to school expecting could happen to them, and this is not how it should be.
Due to what has happened to the #ChibokGirls and many others in that region a lot of parents are refusing to send their children to school where they are still open, and some are saying they would not send their children even when schools are opened. No parents should be made to choose between sending a child to school or their safety.
Work needs to be done to ensure that parents do send their children to school, lest the terrorist will have succeeded with their ideology of western education being forbidden. We must remember injustice to one is injustice to all. Terrorist attack to one is terrorist attack to all. Terror attack to anyone anywhere in the world is terrorist attack to everyone everywhere in the world.
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Aisha Yesufu in Nigeria. All images provided by Aisha Yesufu.
by Aisha Yesufu | Jan 20, 2015 | 2015, Nigeria, World Voice
On the 7th of January I put on the television to hear more devastating news of an attack in France. Not again I groaned. Can’t one just have a terror free day? What kind of world do we live in? My 13 year daughter was with me and she was very angry. What kind of people are these? They better go and have their religion and stop using Islam for their bad deeds. This is not Islam. I couldn’t agree with her more. I felt the pain keenly. One of my problems is emphasising too much and internalizing, and personalizing any pain. With my vivid imagination I could feel it’s my husband killed and someone calling to inform me or coming over to tell me. I could also imagine being the one in my office and looking up to see an armed mad man and realizing this is it! The end, because that man has just come for me. I was so angry at the atrocities being committed in the name of a religion I practice which is all about PEACE.
The pain of people just mowed down by some sadistic killers had not begin to ebb away when on the 9th of January the news of the death of about 2000 was reported by Amnesty International (We usually get news late and most times from the foreign media) in an attack on a town called Baga in North east Nigeria by the deadly group known as Boko Haram who have unleashed a reign of terror in Nigeria. 2000 killed in a single day just like that? How can this be allowed to happen?
The terrorists not only killed people they razed down the town. Reports say they went after fleeing people into the bush and killed indiscriminately. A woman in labour was reportedly killed with her unborn baby halfway out of her. Men, women and children were all game. They did not spare women this time as they sometimes have. After the personal cry and grief. The crying comes with no tears for it has long dried up. I waited for some kind of explanation, some kind of consoling words and there was an overwhelming silence. Silence from my government whose 2000 citizens have just been massacred even if to give the usual. We condemn it and are on top of the situation. Nothing!!
To make matters worse that same government that said nothing of its 2000 citizens massacred had condole with the government of France over the killing of 17 of its citizens. Even to my government the citizens of another country meant more to it than its own citizens.
Top government officials of my country condoled and used #JeSuisCharlie and none of them used #IamBaga where 2000 were killed in a single day. I empathise with the people of France. I am part of those who did the virtual march by signing up, but when you are attacked, and your government shows its contempt by not acknowledging it, and shows so much solidarity to other citizens of another country, then the pain is doubly felt.
On 11th of January 2015 the world stood still for France. Over 1.5million marched in France with over 40 head of states. France cried out that it’s own has been touched. Their President gave a rallying call to its citizens that they would not be intimidated by terrorists and they will deal decisively with anyone who touched an inch of its citizens, and the citizens came out.
Over here I am treated with disdain for daring to stand and say citizens must be protected. When about 48 boys were killed on November 10th 2014 as they attended their morning assembly we were alone the #BringBackOurGirls movement in coming out to the streets and mourning them.
As I watched the solidarity march in Paris my daughter’s words echoed in my ears. She once said to me “Mummy, if one of those #ChibokGirls was an American they would have been found by now.” and I said to myself if those 2000 who were massacred in Baga were French the world would have stood, and perhaps make sure it never happened again. They are Nigerians, and I am a Nigerian, and I face each day knowing if I go down today I will just become a statistic, and nobody will care.
This is an original post written by Aisha Yesufu in Nigeria for World Moms Blog.
Will you join us in raising our collective voices to demand that the world to Bring Back Our Girls Now?!
by Cindy Levin | Nov 25, 2014 | 2014, Africa, Awareness, Education, Girls, Human Rights, Humanitarian, Social Good, World Moms Blog, World Voice
They sat in the back row of the ONE Campaign’s AYA Summit with me in Washington D.C., keeping to themselves and wearing sunglasses in an already darkened room. A computer on their laps, two teenage girls whispered to one another as together we watched videos and heard speakers talking on all ranges of topics affecting girls and women around the world. Vaccines, education, access to electricity, human trafficking, genocide…it was both a heavy and inspiring range of topics as speakers bounced back and forth between storytelling about problems and discussing solutions. Sitting with them and trying (unsuccessfully) to engage them in friendly conversation during breaks, I had no idea how intimately these topics were affecting their lives…
I sat in the back because back row chairs sit beside outlets and I could recharge my phone easily. They sat in back shadows for a very different reason. Because of uncertainty…a desire for anonymity…maybe even fear. One of the two had more immediate reason for concern than the other. Without our knowledge, she was nervously waiting all day for her turn to speak to us and tell us her story.
Her name was Saa* and seven months ago she was kidnapped by Boko Haram from her school in Nigeria.
Last April, the whole world exploded in outrage demanding for these terrorists to #BringBackOurGirls. And then…we heard nothing. Governments searched. Leaders demanded. Parents wept. And we heard nothing.
Then, as if out of the blue, Saa appeared in our midst ready to speak at the AYA Summit to a group of parents armed with laptops and 45 million social media followers.
This is her story.
On April 14, kidnappers from the terrorist group Boko Haram entered Saa’s school in Chibok with a plan to capture all the girls who studied and slept at her school. At 11:30PM, Saa and her classmates heard terrible noises of violence. Scared, she called her father and asked what she should do. He told her to stay where she was and wait for help.
No help came.
Collecting all the girls to a common area, kidnappers started burning everything from the school. Surrounded by weapons, the girls were told if they shouted or ran away, they would all be killed. Gunmen started demanding information about the location of a local mission, the location of the boys in the school (there were no boys), and where the school kept food. Two girls showed them where the food was and the guards emptied the store of food supplies.
They forced them away from the school and gathered them under a big tree, bringing vehicles including small cars and big trucks. The girls were ordered to enter big, high trucks by climbing up upon a small car and into the truck. “They said if any girl did not want to go into the trucks, she should come out and they would kill her,” Saa told us. After moving to another village, they moved the girls from trucks and started filling the car with the girls sitting on laps. There was not enough room for everyone to sit and three girls were left outside. The men asked the first girl if she was Muslim or Christian. She was Muslim, so they moved on and asked the same of the next girl who – despite being Christian – replied that she was Muslim out of fear for what they might do to her. When the third girl admitted that she was Christian under questioning, one of the kidnappers decided he should kill her right there and let the Muslim girls go. Other kidnappers fortunately intervened and convinced him not to kill her then, and there. Amazingly, those three girls were released for lack of room, but told not to turn back or everyone would be killed. Those girls ran away to the town.
As the vehicles started to travel and moved past one village, a few girls started to jump from the trucks. Saa decided for herself that she would rather jump and die than face the uncertainty of what lay ahead. She told her plan to friend saying, “I would rather that my parents have to bury me in a coffin.” Her friend agreed to jump, too. The truck continued through the middle of a forest in the dark with cars following behind. The girls waited for an opportunity when the following cars were not within sight then leapt from the trucks, Saa first and then her friend. After the jump, Saa discovered her friend had injured her leg and was unable to move very far. She helped her friend into the forest away from the road, so they would not be discovered. They moved as far as they could and slept in that spot until morning.
In the morning – with her friend still unable to travel – Saa sought out help. The first person Saa met was a shepherd. She asked him for help, but he refused out of fear for his own safety. He advised them to wait until 9 or 10 AM when some people may travel that way going to market and possibly help them. Saa argued that not many people would come by because the violence from the night before would make them afraid to come. They must move quickly because the “bad people” may follow that road again. Finally, he agreed to help and carried Saa’s friend on a bicycle.
On the road, they did meet people who were coming to look for their daughters who helped bring the girls back to Chibok. Then, they went back to their hometown. When they arrived home, Saa was reunited with her parents who met her in tears. All of her relatives were weeping because of the ordeal.
Saa didn’t cry as she related her story. She spoke softly and quickly in a matter-of-fact manner. I wondered how many times she had told her story and if sticking just to the facts helped her remain detached enough to get the story out. Even though this was only the second time she had spoken publicly about it, I imagine she must have related it many times to her family and to authorities trying to glean clues to recover her classmates who are still missing.
In the audience, we sat in shock…surprised to be in her presence and horrified by the audacity of Boko Haram to violate their freedom in this way. Most of us were mothers who had a very visceral reaction to the thought of someone stealing our daughters away in the night to be sold, raped, married, or killed.
I thought about that horrible conversation Saa’s father in which he faced a terrible choice of how to advise his daughter over the phone. Would you tell your daughter to run and risk her being shot in the back? Or would you tell her to wait for help, knowing that she might be trafficked and violated if no one comes to help? I thought about the shepherd, afraid for his life. He balked, but did the right thing in the end. I admired Saa’s skillful persuasion in arguing with him to provide aid and her courage to leap from a moving truck in the midst of a forest full of danger from animals and humans.
To my horror, on my Twitter feed that very night as we gathered around Saa to thank her for her courage and her story, I saw 25 more girls had been captured by these monsters. In a video delivered 200 days after Saa’s kidnapping, Boko Haram leaders scoff at the idea at negotiating for release along with ceasefire agreements. The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, flanked by gunman reportedly said, “The issue of the girls is long forgotten because I have long ago married them off…Don’t you know the over 200 Chibok schoolgirls have converted to Islam? They have now memorized two chapters of the Koran.” According to A World At School, Boko Haram claims to be holding 500 women and girls against their will.
I write this blog because the issue of the 219 Chibok schoolgirls is not forgotten. Not by Saa. Not by me. Not by a long shot. Saa told her story and gave us permission to use her picture for a very specific reason…to have us share it with others. If sharing her picture and her story is a way to get people to remember why we stand up for girls’ education and why the U.S. should put pressure on the Nigerian government to stop these atrocities and recover the victims, then that’s what I will do. And that’s what I ask you to do.
1. Continue to use the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag on Twitter. When you see news about it, tweet it to your networks and your members of Congress
2. Use Saa’s story and write your own blogs or letters to the editor about it to keep it in the media and social media
3. Be a champion for global girls’ education. As I said in my World Moms Blog post last may, What Can Americans Do for Abducted Nigerian Schoolgirls?, “The welfare of the kidnapped girls rests in someone else’s hands in the short-term, but I advocate against poverty and injustice wth an eye for the long-term. While we wait and we pray for these girls, shouldn’t we be using this anger and anguish to secure a future for all girls?”
I’d like to leave you with a happy thought about Saa’s education. Saa, her friend, and two other escaped Chibok schoolgirls have been brought to the United States where they will be able to study freely alongside other young women who don’t know what it means to live in fear for the right to learn. Her family knows she is safe. Her future is in her own hands. But she continues to fear for her classmates…as do we all. Read her story again. Think on it. Then, act on it.
*”Saa” is a pseudonym she uses for her own protection
This is an original post written by Cindy Levin for World Moms Blog.
Cynthia Changyit Levin is a mother, advocate, speaker, and author of the upcoming book “From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started.” A rare breed of non-partisan activist who works across a variety of issues, she coaches volunteers of all ages to build productive relationships with members of Congress. She advocated side-by-side with her two children from their toddler to teen years and crafted a new approach to advocacy based upon her strengths as a mother. Cynthia’s writing and work have appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, the Washington Post, and many other national and regional publications. She received the 2021 Cameron Duncan Media Award from RESULTS Educational Fund for her citizen journalism on poverty issues. When she’s not changing the world, Cynthia is usually curled up reading sci-fi/fantasy novels or comic books in which someone else is saving the world.
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