In a ceremony that was as sombre as it was hopeful, Reverend Rupert Hambira of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa prayed for both the victims as well as the culprits, beseeching God to “unleash mercy” upon the latter by cleansing their hearts and souls. The culprits are members of a terrorist group whose full name is The Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad but is more commonly known by its Hausa name, Boko Har?m, which means “Western education is sinful.”
The group’s conviction about the sinfulness of western education prompted it to abduct 230 girls at a school in the village of Chibok in Northern Nigeria on April 14 this year. The group’s leader later appeared in a video in which he made the startling pronouncement that “I sell humans” before allowing himself a brief chortle. Giving background information on Boko Haram, the Nigerian Deputy High Commissioner, Obla Ojeka-Eje, who was the guest speaker at the event, said that the group started off as an otherwise tolerable pressure group which was speaking out against the education of the girl-child. By her account, Nigeria has an equal mix of Christians and Muslims and some in the latter group favour Arabic schooling for their children.
On score of the fact that human rights are entrenched in Nigeria’s constitution, Ojeka-Eje said that her government couldn’t stop Boko Haram’s campaign but instead instituted its own to stress the importance of educating girls. In making this point, she restated the saying that educating women is tantamount to educating the nation.
Apparently, Boko Haram is pushing the envelope because it literally has Christianity on its sights. “It also wants all of Nigeria to become Muslim,” Ojeka-Eke said. This ambition explains why on, June 17, 2012, the group’s suicide bombers struck three churches in Kaduna state, killing 50 people. At the time that Boko Haram started agitating against the haram-ness of boko, its campaigns were peaceful and Ojeka-Eje said that “the government couldn’t arrest people for gathering or saying that western education is bad.” However, the campaign took on a sinister tone after the Arab Spring – the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests that engulfed the Arab world beginning December 2010 and resulted in the ouster of the leaders of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen.
To its north, Nigeria shares borders with Muslim countries and as happens in all of Africa, border communities tend to be blood relations who were separated by the partition of Africa that followed the 1884 Berlin Conference. Ojeka-Eje said that the “wide, porous” border between Nigeria and its neighbours enable almost unfettered border-crossing by communities on both sides. With the Arab Spring gaining traction in North Africa, militants “overspilled” into Northern Nigeria and it was around this time that Boko Haram took up armed struggle and started calling for the introduction of Sharia Law. Up to this point, suicide bombers were unheard of in Nigeria but that soon change as the group’s campaign intensified. “This caught us unawares because no country in the world is prepared to deal with terrorism until it happens. Even the United States didn’t know how to deal with it until it was attacked,” Ojeka-Eje said. On April 14, Boko Haram did the unthinkable: its operatives pounced on a school at night in a village called Chibok and abducted 230 girls at a boarding school.
Their transgression was that they had been acquiring western education. Ojeka-Eje said that at first, the government found this hard to believe because Boko Haram (which usually announces its terror acts) was not too quick to claim responsibility for the abduction. However, it soon became clear that the terrorist group had ratcheted up its terror to a completely new level. “Targetting other human being is bad enough but targetting children was nothing we had ever imagined would happen,” Ojeka-Eje said. It is for that reason that the Nigerian government found itself at its wits’ end when it turned out that the girls had been abducted. “We are not used to hostage situations in Nigeria. We don’t have people who are trained to negotiate with hostage takers and we can also not just rush in with guns and try to rescue the girls,” Ojeka-Eje said. In some parts of the world, even in Nigeria itself, concern has been raised about the manner in which the government of President Goodwill Jonathan is handling the crisis. One persistent charge is that it doesn’t share information with the public as well as with the parents of the abducted girls.
Ojeka-Eje stated that the government deemed it wise to have security agencies “work quietly in the community without incident.” She restated what the Nigerian government has said about having located the general area where the girls are held and assured the audience that her country was doing all it can to secure the girls’ release. “For security reasons, I can’t reveal what we are doing,” she said. Complicating the matter further was that initially Boko Haram didn’t make any demands and Ojeka-Eje said that when it did, the demands kept changing. What the group wants now is the release of its members held in Nigerian prisons. It is highly unlikely that would happen. Firstly, the Nigerian government has a strict policy to not negotiate with terrorists and secondly, were such negotiations to be held, Ojeka-Eje said that it is unclear whom the government would engage with.
“We are fighting faceless people and if we were to negotiate, whom would we negotiate with?” According to the envoy, the government has alerted villagers to be on the look-out for Boko Haram elements and report their presence to authorities. Unfortunately though, the villagers have not helped the situation because in one particularly tragic incident, villagers rounded up the group’s operatives and swiftly executed them. Boko Haram, which according to some reports in the western press is better-equipped than units of the Nigerian army fighting it, retaliated in like manner.
“That is why Boko Haram is now killing villagers,” Ojeka-Eje stated. As a mother, she said that she feels heart-wrenching pain each time she has to hear or read speculation in the press about “all the possible things” that could be happening to the girls. The event was organised by the Botswana Girl Guides Association (BOGGA) which has a chapter at Thornhill, Gaborone’s first elite private school. Giving welcome remarks at the event, BOGGA’s Chief Commissioner, Martha Naledi, said that Botswana and Nigeria belong to the international girl-guide movement, both falling under the Africa region, “hence the need to come together and remember our sisters in Nigeria.” “We want to remember and pray for their safety. We are hoping for their immediate release and reunion with their families. As parents, as mothers and as sisters, we are calling out: bring back our girls,” she said.
For some odd reason, while much of the world has publicly expressed moral support for the Chibok girls, Botswana has been lagging behind. Naledi said that other countries were “far ahead” in their support for the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. She cited South Africa where a protest march in support of the girls was recently held in Johannesburg. As far as we could establish, the exceptions have been President Ian Khama who spoke about the tragedy when opening last month’s Africa Youth Games as well as the Women in Business Association (WIBA). At a recent meeting, members of the latter observed a moment of silence in honour of the abducted girls. “It is only logical that as mothers we should voice our concern,” says WIBA’s president, Tumi Mbaakanyi. Speaking at the Thornhill event, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Gaositwe Chiepe, stated the truism that “no man is an island” to stress the importance of Botswana joining the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. “We should stand together because every adult is every child’s parent and every child is every adult’s child.
The abducted girls could be in Nigeria but they are our children. We are just as hurt as their [biological] parents and we want them back safe and in good health,” said Chiepe, who is herself a girl guide. Ojeka-Eje promised to “convey this show of love, this solidarity to my country. We appreciate the concern and prayers of the whole world.”
