By Abimbola Adelakun
In a matter of weeks, it will be a whole
year since Boko Haram kidnapped the Chibok schoolgirls. In that
agonising period, Nigerians have witnessed the government demonstrating
its own impotence on their rescue. First, there were strident denials by
both the government and their echo chamber. When the eyes of the world
were fixed on Nigeria, they retreated in humiliation to set up a
committee to unravel what the Police could have done within hours of the
abduction. Then, the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, gave her Nollywood
response to the abduction by shedding overdramatised tears on live TV.
Since then, the government has traded in
promises including to rebuild the girls’ school gates. Some of the
parents were invited to meet the President in Abuja to listen to more
promises firsthand. As if all the pussyfooting has not been distressing
enough, the President recently asserted that the girls must still be
alive; that if it had been otherwise, the terrorists would have made a
public display of their corpses. Now, how do you respond to that without
joining him to trade in the macabre?
Notwithstanding this series of failures,
some of us still hold out the hope that providence will eventually
bring every one of these girls home one day.
One would think that with that
embarrassment of how the Nigerian politics underwrote the trajectory of
the Chibok saga, politicians would sensibly avoid that terrain and
resist making political capital out of an issue so sensitive.
Otherwise, why would the Minister of
Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, travel to Chibok last weekend to lay
the foundations of the school that was destroyed by Boko Haram the night
the girls were kidnapped? Her trip was ostensibly done under the veil
of the Safe School Initiative under the auspices of the ministry she
superintends; but, take a look at the calendar, check what date it is.
It is conclusive that as the elections draw near, politicians are going
to be playing the politics of I-remain-loyal by showing the “Ogas at the
topmost top” that they have invested in the outcome of the election.
Just like the #BringBackOurGirls famous hashtag was snagged by President
Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election campaigners, one can be sure that there
will be no opportunity that will be too immoral, too sanctimonious, too
sensitive for these political actors to claw at in the bid to redeem
their many past acts of negligence.
The school rebuilding effort comes with
many mouth-watering promises: the new school will have a “state of the
art” library; laboratory; a computer and ICT Centre; sports arena;
clinic; observation post; new staff accommodation complex; official
residence for the principal; brand new administration block and new
dormitories. The school will also run on solar power and there is a
water reservoir proposed to be built as well.
You look at the array of promises and
wonder what manner of benevolence would make the government put such an
array of facilities in an obscure part of Nigeria like Chibok if there
is no political agenda to it. If public schools in Nigeria were like
this proposed one, would Nigerian officials tuck their own children away
in either private or foreign schools leaving public ones to provide
poor education for the children of the poor so they can remain poor?
If this were about the people of Chibok,
would the timing not have been considered? Would Okonjo-Iweala not have
been sensitive to the political hue her presence invests in that
exercise? Rather than go to Chibok to seize a photo-op with the
miserable mothers whose children are still not home, why not at least
send an official of the ministry? By the way, why is a facility-studded
school a sudden priority for a town likely still hung over on the trauma
of unredressed assault on them a year ago, and the continued precarious
safety of their town?
One of the photographs taken at the
event showed Okonjo-Iweala surrounded by the Chibok women and you wonder
how she reconciles the contradiction of her persona with the futile
attempt to act as if she and the women are coevals. Because, no matter
how she tries to spin it, the truth is that she is not them and she does
not – and perhaps can never – share their misery. Her presence in their
midst is more or less feeding off their pain to advance her politics.
The act of situating yourself in the victim place to momentarily
experience their pain and separating yourself from the encounter, back
to the life of privileges you enjoy, is voyeurism.
Whatever motherly love Okonjo-Iweala
wants to claim compelled her to undertake that trip cannot be viewed in
isolation of the fact that the government she serves is not making a
genuine effort to find the girls. Just lately, the person most intimate
with the President, Dame Patience Jonathan, out of the abundance of her
heart, gave away the private attitude of those entrusted with finding
those girls when she insinuated that northerners do not love their
children.
In a moment of rhetorical excess while on a campaign trail, she said, “We
for the South we no get almajiris because our men no dey born children
wey dem no go remember their names. Our men no dey born children wey dem
no dey fit count. Our men no dey born children wey dem go thruway give
Imam… For them that side, na born. Give Imam. Oya go. Because they no
know them. One man go born children leave am for Mama…”
To her, northern children are mere abokis –
rejected by their parents; merely born to be condemned to a meaningless
existence. Even the way she referred to northerners as the people on
“that side” shows disdain. They are the Nigeria’s “other” who act as a
foil to the “better-behaved” southerners. If her husband shares her
bigotry, then we can be sure that if not for politics, they would not
even touch an average northerner with an electric pole. That perhaps
explains the nonchalance with which the President has approached Boko
Haram for most of the time. If Okonjo-Iweala cannot find a higher moral
ground to tread here, she needs not exploit people further for political
gains.
Perhaps, one can hope she saved enough
memories of Chibok in her conscience for another time she will announce
spurious figures of job creation. Hopefully, she will remember that like
the people of Chibok, there are real people out there facing real
issues and who have remained untouched by the unreal figures being
bandied all over the place.
- This Piece was written by Abimbola Adelakun/Punch
No comments:
Post a Comment