Two speakers addressed the crowd and then there was a question and answer session. The first was Ibrahim Audu, an architect and member of the #BBOG group in Abuja and a native of the Chibok region. The other was Chidi Odinkalu, the chair of the governing council of the National Human Rights Commission in Abuja.
Audu made a lot of important points about how Abuja politics stymied the search for the missing girls. When the abductions were first discovered and Chibok pople in Abuja as well as others alerted the authorities, they were dismissed because the powers that be in Abuja insisted that the abduction story was just that, a story, and one meant to politically discredit GEJonathan and his regime. It reminded me of Washington, D.C. where action might be blocked on perfectly reasonable bills simply because Republicans see them as coming from the opposition. similarly, action was blocked on pursuing the abductors because the story was seen as a fabrication of political opponents of the regime. The tragedy, Audu said, is that the girls were kept in a village outside of the Sambisa "forest" for 11 days before being moved to more inaccessible locations. In other words, they could absolutely have been recovered early on if not for the paranoia, callousness, and frank unprofessionalism of responsible officers in Abuja and the Northeast. Three weeks after initial reports of the abduction, the authorities decided to set up a fact-finding committee. This move, only confirmed to the #BBOG abuja folks that the authorities still refused to believe. Meanwhile the clock was ticking on the missing girls.
The #BBOG Abuja folks have also experienced various kinds of harassment. Famously,the Inspector General of Police in blatant contradiction of sections of the Nigerian constitution announced a ban on all rallies and protests related to the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. Of course the Abuja based protestors were most immediately affected. Less known is that there has been a counter protest movement that has emerged in abuja. Wearing red shirts like the #BBOG people, and chanting loudly, members of the Release our Girls group would converge in the sam place as #BBOG folks. They would chant for BH to release the girls, rather than for the Nigerian security forces to go and find them. It was absurdist political theater in Abuja while the clock was ticking on the missing girls.
The other speaker was Chidi Odinkalu with the Nigerian Human Rights Commission. He opened by leading everyone in a round of the activist anthem, "Solidarity." Solidarity forever, we shall always fight for our right...
His talk was organized around 4 thematic areas; 4Cs, one could say: citizenship, caring, country, counting. Odinkalu emphasized the way in which the bbog movment has pulled together the country and recovered a practice of caring across various social lines. even in the small gathering on the marina, about 100 or 150 people, they still represented the diversity of the nation. By contrast government officials go on the news and they cannot account for the numbers of girls missing and yet these same officials readily talk about census numbers and budget numbers. This politics of counting and not counting speaks to the low value accorded to citizens by certain national officials. The case of the missing Chibok girls, and particularly its handling is just another symptom of the limits of Nigeria's democracy. Despite these conditions, people were still committed to the dream of a Nigeria that valued its people and worked to enhance the lives of citizens. Odinkalu and others in the crowd did a roll call of Nigerian activists who had fought and died for democracy in the nation: Funmilayo Kuti, Fela, Beko Ransome-Kuti, Ken Saro Wiwa, Gani Fawehinmi, and others. He emphasized that the larger struggle for justice and peace in Nigeria is a long term struggle and exhorted the gathering not to waste the high costs that others had already paid or to forget the struggles of the past like the pro-democracy movements under Abacha and other dictators.
He closed with a few ideas and take-aways.
1) Security forces in Nigeria may be grossly overextended. There are three ongoing wars in the country.
Niger delta . operation money pulo : operation protect oil
Jos in the middlebelt
Northeast war against BH.
To deal with all this, the country's military has about 45000 folks, who are constrained in various ways due to their involvement in past coups. The troops are also under resourced and heavily centralized, thus ineffective in local areas that they may know little about.
Furthermore, the insurgency started 4 years ago. Women have been abducted since 2010/ 2011 and in the heavily agricultural Northeast, the farms have long been abandoned due to insecurity. There is not much food. All of these are humanitarian challenges for the region.
Ramadan is coming and so is Eid. Odinkalu suggested we need a humanitarian plan for the region that would create a corridor of security, food security, and other basic needs. Using what he called managed displacement these goods could be delivered to citizens while maximizing the available military resources.
On the education front, he said we need a plan to defend education. "People are looking at this as a war for territory but this is also a war for civilization." we need a credible plan to return education to the north. and we need a humanitarian plan for "managed displacement" of directly affected populations.
The gathering then broke into question asking, general discussion, sharing information from their various organizations. A woman from Maiduguri said she was working on a plan to bring girls to the city for post trauma care as Maiduguri was still relatively safe, but she needed more contacts with officials and NGOs or foundations to put together a planning committee. Another woman from the Muritala Muhammad Foundation offered to help. Solidarity in action.
Final Words:
june 16th. people of conscience around the world should wear red in solidarity with the chibok girls
Day 55. To date, 57 of the girls are said to have escaped. 4 quite recently some of whom are in the hospital. 219 girls are still in the forest.
Nigerian elections are coming in 2015. All politicians should be asked what they have done for the campaign. #No Girls No Vote
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