By Blogger
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| Malala Yousafzai |
On Monday July 15, 2014, exactly three months after the news of the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction was broken to the world, a 17-year-old Pakistani girl called Malala Yousufzai walked through the revered gates of Nigeria’s presidential villa to have a meeting with the country’s president, Chief Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
The crux of her meeting with Nigeria’s No. 1 citizen was the need for the rescue of the abducted Chibok girls.
Interestingly, for the first time since the abduction of the girls, President Jonathan agreed to meet with the parents and even promised that the girls will be rescued safely in no distant time.
Many Nigerians had hailed the 17-year-old, who came all the way from war-torn Pakistan to Nigeria just to convince the presidency on the need to, at least, listen and talk to the families of the abducted schoolgirls who are still held by the Boko Haram.
Malala was given such rare presidential treatment and audience because about three years ago, the Taliban in Pakistan attempted. She was lucky to live, because the bullet that fired at her only scaled through her outer skull and ripped her neck open. The Taliban targeted her for being an advocate of girl-child education. After series of medical rescue efforts, Malala was back on her foot and had since become an international icon.
Perhaps in Pakistan, hers was an isolated case; perhaps, there are many others like her in Pakistan, but Malala’s attempted assassination was a celebrated case because the media made it so.
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| Jonathan flipping through an album gift presented to him by Malala |
But in Nigeria where the Boko Haram insurgents had not only ‘proscribed’ western education but also forbids education for all children, many girls of Malala’s age, or even younger, have similar cases or stories to tell about how they had suffered (and are still suffering) because of their individual and collective resolve to go to school.
Many of them, including one of the Chibok schoolgirls who was said to have been raped and abused before she could find her way back home, have worse stories to tell that could make the world shiver or even out-stage Malala’s story.
But their stories are never told.
Possibly, Nigerians may have forgotten so quickly an incident that took place on Monday, March 18, 2013, when three critically injured female students of Abbaganaram UBE School were rushed to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital after Boko Haram gunmen attacked their school at the time they were taking their terminal exams.
One of the three injured girls, Aisha Baba Mala, was rushed to the intensive care unit of the hospital because she suffered an injury caused by bullets that ruptured her kidney and her intestine. The hospital recommended that for her to survive, she must be flown out of the country for better medical attention.
In pain and with teary eyes as she lay at the intensive care unit, Aisha, 16 years old, muttered her words of appreciation to the Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima, who offered to sponsor her trip to Egypt for a major operation. She was happy and hoped that if she returned to school she would be able to continue her education.
The two other girls; one with an injury on a shoulder and the other in the leg, were also given the best of treatment at the hospital, even though they too were left psychologically traumatised.
Sadly, these schoolgirls, coming from an environment where culture and, to a huge degree, religious beliefs, did not give them that needed support to pursue western education because of their gender, are now left to their poor parents to tend to their bruised hopes.
When the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted three months ago, about 15 out of those that made it back from Sambisa came with ugly tales of their experiences in the hands of their captives, which they could not tell the world. But a story was told by one of the girls who said she suffered abuses (sexually) while she was there. Sadly, neither the government nor Nigerians applauding the story of Malala saw reasons why these girls’ stories were discarded.
The coming of Malala to Nigeria, though may be a noble gesture by a teenager whose heart defied the geographic distance to show empathy for her age mates in captivity of one of the world’s most dangerous terror group, but the manner the people and government of Nigeria received her was seen as a huge embarrassment to many in the country.
In Borno State, Malala’s visit was not celebrated, because many of the people feel that the 57 Chibok schoolgirls who were so lucky to escape the captivity of the Boko Haram shouldn’t have spent more than a week before seeing their president.
“No matter how insignificant we took their experiences as Boko Haram abduction escapees, their courage to make it out of that dangerous jungle alone is enough reason [for] the nation to celebrate them and make them the frontline advocates for the rescue of their other 219 colleagues still being held by their abductors,” said Naomi Adamu, a civil servant whose two nieces, Naomi and Lydia, are also amongst the missing girls.
“How could we imagine our own president not having to meet the parents of the girls in Chibok or having them brought to him in Abuja so that, at least, they could be given some words of assurances and hope that the government of their country did not abandon them in their misery? Imagine, it took a 17-year-old girl from Pakistan to convince our leaders in Abuja that it was very necessary for the parents to meet with the president.
“What is the big deal about Malala that is different from what our girls have gone through? Some of them were raped, some abused and brutalised. Is it because we are not talking? If Malala was shot in the head and she was lucky to survive death, a number of Chibok schoolgirls also suffered the same fate and are, today, faced with serious psychological trauma that they may have to live with for the rest of their lives; yet, no one takes them serious,” Adamu said, near tears.
The deputy national mobilisation leader for the #BringBackOurGirls Movement, Yusuf Sheriff Banki, had also faulted the attitude of the federal government towards the issue of rescuing the abducted Chibok girls and the presidency’s unwillingness to meet with the people of Chibok. He specifically disparaged the silence government had been according all pressure mounted to ensure that real action take the stage instead of continual words of hope.
“We are demanding for status of the security operation to bring back the Chibok schoolgirls, because the Nigerian government isn’t giving any information about the level of success and efforts made in rescuing the Chibok girls,” Banki said.
Bitrus Pona, a native of Chibok who resides in Maiduguri was far from pleased with the attitude of the government towards the rescue of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.
“We have watched keenly how government treats this matter with disdain; they don’t seem to care. At first, they doubted if felt it was a lie that the girls were actually abducted, then we heard that the president was coming to Chibok. Our people, especially the parents, gathered, only to hear that the trip had been cancelled, without a word of apology. Since then, there has been no word from the president, until that Pakistani girl came; suddenly the president want to impress the world by quickly opening his doors to her. It means that our people are not worthy of seeing the president that they voted for to lead them.
Pona thumbed up the decision of the #BringBackOurGirls team not to allow the parents go see the President.
“What would he have told them? There is no honor in seeing a leader whose duty has to be told him by a teenage foreigner. What was so special in that girl called Malala that our fellow country men and women that had been on the street asking to be seen by the presidency don’t have? Instead, they were shut out and even threatened. We have many girls and, even, children who are in hospitals or walking on crutches and those suffering because the Boko Haram attacked them in school; we have a girl who was shot in the abdomen while she was writing exams in school. So, what is the big deal about worshiping some foreign girl who was also shot at, that she became the only person qualified to tell our president that he needed to see his own people who are in pains? It is sad that we still don’t value our own people,” said Pona.
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