There are many things I don’t do. Using the F word is one of them but FUCK you
Nigeria, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH!
I have watched with horror as a young girl is paraded
by the Government. A young girl who was
abducted, held hostage for two years (under heaven knows what kind of
circumstances) is rescued or released with a baby and our first reaction is to
parade her as a prize. What happened to
privacy, what happened to giving her time to heal? Do we care about this girl
at all or just about scoring points?
Towards the end of the former president’s tenure, there had
been reports about the Nigerian army rescuing hundreds of girls from different
camps. I’ll confess that I wondered if this was true, or if it was exaggerated to
score political points but I have recently, in the course of my work had to
visit some IDP camps in Abuja. The first
thing I noticed was the absence of young women.
When I asked, they said most of them were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Apparently
the terrorist group hardly if ever kills women, they ‘marry’ them instead. In one of the camps, there were 697 young men
to 26 young women. Yes, you read right. 26! Most of the girls were said to be
in BH captivity. Reports say that about 2000 girls were abducted by the
terrorist group, this figure may actually be under-reported.
One of the young women who spoke to us said she was pregnant
when they raided her village so she was relatively safe. Her husband hid in the
roof for days before he got a chance to escape but when she had her baby, they
told her they were coming to marry her so she also had to escape with her few
days old baby. Another told us she’d
been abducted but escaped after months but not before she was impregnated.
We heard horror story upon horror story. No family we met
was complete, there was always a brother or a sister or a mother they had no
idea of their whereabouts. They have no
Government support. There have been many visitors and pledges but as with many
things Nigerian, that is where it ends. They live on charity. Only able to feed when a
Good Samaritan drops by. This is Abuja ,
the seat of power is in Abuja, the big men are in Abuja yet people who through
their own strong will and luck managed to cheat death are being ignored by the
Government. Able bodied men sit around
playing cards all day, mothers go into labour unsupervised, there’s a health
center not far off that charges NGN6,500 for delivery but most of them cannot
afford the cab fare to the center how much more the delivery charge so they do
it on their own. Those who survive, survive and those who die, die.
But this Government wants me to pat her on the back for
rescuing one girl and parading her to the world. Hey look, America , we did it. What makes her
different? What about the many girls who escaped or who were previously rescued
and have been completely abandoned; homeless and destitute, some of them with
babies to feed.
To borrow a line from Sprite, Image isn’t everything. Conscience
is. The IDP camps are in terrible conditions. The people have little or no
hope. Help them! All Nigerian lives
should matter whether they are from Chibok or UkanaIba!
