Boko Haram leader an 'obscenity'

Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Boko Haram's leader as an "obscenity" who is likely to be incapable of dialogue, as the government considers opening talks with the Islamists over the more than 200 abducted schoolgirls.

The winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature said by phone from Los Angeles that Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau was "high on religion and drugs".

"For me, we are dealing with a sub-human species," Soyinka said. "How do you dialogue with that kind of obscenity?"

Debate over the prospects of negotiating with Boko Haram and even Shekau himself has been a controversial issue in Nigeria throughout the extremist group's uprising which has killed thousands.

The issue resurfaced on Monday after Shekau released a video suggesting the girls kidnapped from a secondary school in the northeastern town of Chibok could be released in exchange for Islamist prisoners held by the government.

"It is a bind for the nation because the girls must be secured," Soyinka said, voicing sympathy for the officials who must assess the pros and cons of talking to Shekau.

The shocking mass abduction has drawn worldwide condemnation, partly thanks to a social media campaign supported by major world leaders and celebrities.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has accepted military assistance from the United States, Britain, France, Israel and China to help with the rescue effort.

Some commentators have suggested that welcoming help from foreign militaries was an embarrassment for Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and top economy.

But Soyinka said such critics were showing a lack of compassion for the teenaged hostages.

"I don't know what they are talking about," he said. "This is a global crisis."

"In this situation, where we have these kind of killers, homicidal maniacs who can go into schools and kidnap hundreds of girls... all help is welcome," Soyinka said.

For the international community, given such horrifying violence, intervening is 'not a favour'," he added. "It is a duty."

Activists have organised daily protests in the capital Abuja demanding the girls' release and demonstrations have also been held in other cities across the country.

Civil activism is rare in Nigeria, with the prominent exception of massive demonstrations over the scrapping of a popular petrol subsidy that shut down the country in January 2012.

Nigeria has a track record of cracking down on protests and Soyinka warned Jonathan against suppressing public anger over the plight of the girls and the escalating Boko Haram violence.

Jonathan's administration "had better be very, very careful, because people are in pain and they have been in pain for a very, very long time" he cautioned.

A few protests have been disbanded by the police and there were disputed reports that Jonathan's wife, Patience, had ordered the arrest of one protest leader for falsely identifying herself as the mother of one of the hostages.

If the protests continue, Soyinka said, the government "had better get out of the way".

MSNNews

I’m not sure any child is missing in Borno – Jonathan

By Wole Oye 

The First Lady took the position after it was discovered that the leader of the protest on the abducted child was an impersonator, who is a deputy director in the National Directorate of Employment.

The First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, on Monday washed her hands off the reported arrest of the leader of #BringBackOurGirls campaign, Naomi Mutah.
Jonathan, however, insisted that having been identified as an impersonator, Mutah must be arrested and made to face the music.
Mutah, a Deputy Director of the National Directorate of Employment, had posed as one one the mothers of the abducted children in Chibok, Borno State and led a protest to the National Assembly alongside a former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili.
However, the bubble burst when somebody identified her as a civil servant based in Abuja and who had no child in Chibok.
It was also discovered that she registered her name as Mrs. Grace when she attended a meeting with the First Lady at the Presidential Villa.
This infuriated the First Lady who ordered that she be handed over to the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, for coming to the Villa to impersonate.
The First lady had said: “When they said they have come to lay complain to the government and the National Assembly, I asked for the leader of the mothers whose children were abducted.
“This woman was the one that came forward and said that her child was abducted.
“I believed her and I asked the Women Affairs Minister to follow her to the National Assembly.
“This is the woman who went to National Assembly with the women in black and she claimed that her child was missing and that she is the leader of parents that their children are missing in Chibok.
“Senate President believed them, even me believed them.
“God is leading us to the truth.
“Our coming out is not in vain.
“She called people like Oby to follow her as they also believed her.
“Oby is innocent and I don’t blame her because even me as First Lady, I was moved.
“Today, when I sighted her, I said within myself that we will get to the conclusion today because one of those whose child is missing is here.
“But to my greatest surprise, when we asked her, she said she is a representative.
“She wrote down her name as Grace.
“A whole civil servant impersonating.
“She should be arrested for impersonation.”
Turning the Borno State Commissioner of Police, who was also at the meeting, the First Lady said: “You have to take this woman to IG and the President.”
Mutah was said to have admitted that she had no child among the abducted children after being quizzed.
She was said to have also disclosed that she was contacted to represent one of those persons expected to attend the meeting at the First Lady’s Conference Room.
The leader of the #BringBackourGirls said: “It was in the morning that somebody called me from Borno State, one Mrs. Grace.
“She said that she was supposed to come, but that since we are here as Chibok representatives, that we should come and represent her here.
“I have not gone to Chibok in the past one year.”
In the same vein, the Minister of Women Affairs, Zainab Maina, said she was deceived by Mutah, who did not disclose her identity.
According to Maina: “I saw this lady and two others on Tuesday.
“My deputy director came into my office and said you are talking about going to Chibok, mothers of those abducted girls from Chibok are here and they are in Eagles Square.
“When I asked them if they are mothers from Chibok, they said yes.
“I asked them where their destination is and they said National Assembly and Villa.
“I said no, you can’t come to Villa, may be National Assembly.
“I followed them to National Assembly to listen to what they wanted to tell the legislators.
“I sat to the end until they finished and I then asked them for the leader of the delegation.
“She came forward and I asked her where are the girls from Chibok, how many of them and if she could give me the names of the girls and she said that they were not from Chibok and that they are based in Abuja.”
“I shouted oh my God, you have killed me.
“If I know you are from Abuja, I won’t waste my time to come here and talk to you.
“Later on, somebody made enquiries and my Permanent Secretary took her phone number and name and she is a deputy director in NDE.
“I was really angry with them and walked out from the place.
“What surprised me again is the gut she has to come here (Presidential Villa) just by mere phone call from somebody in Borno State to represent her.
“This is not a market place.
“This meeting is a very official meeting aimed at resolving this problem of abduction.
“It is not for everybody to come.
“I don’t know who gave you the invitation.”
At this point, the First Lady wondered if truly the children are missing, saying: “So my sisters you can all see that within them they know what they are doing.
“With what is happening now, will you believe that any children got missing?
“So, we the Nigerian women are saying that no child is missing in Borno State.
“If any child is missing, let the governor go and look for them.
“There is nothing we can do again.
“We will now go spiritual.
“What we women should pray for now is the killings in Borno to stop.
“God will reveal them one by one.
“The blood of the innocent victims will come out and speak.”
A statement by Ayo Adewuyi, the Media Assistant to the First Lady, said she had no hand in the arrest of Mutah.
Adewuyi said: “We wish to state without any iota of equivocation that the First Lady did not order the arrest of any woman or any one for that matter before, during and after the meeting.
“The Naomi Mutah mentioned in one of the reports came to the meeting as part of Borno delegation.
“The women were alarmed when someone who knew her told the meeting that she was impersonating one of the mothers of the allegedly abducted children on the basis for which she attended the meeting.”

TheEagleOnLine

Nigeria: A Colony Of Terrorists And Perverts, By Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

The government has no will power to confront these destroyers because each and everyone in position today has a lot to hide and it has become a dangerous game.
I do not watch Jonathan media chat because I want to be spared the agony of seeing him say nothing meaningful. I usually read the transcripts and I have never been disappointed at my decision that nothing good can come out of this Presidency. Mr. Jonathan has no reassuring presence, in his own words; “He does not give a damn!” We all can “go and die!” 

Under his watch, the country grew confused, we are left to wallow in confusion creating more frustration, more tedium, more fear and more despair. Terrorism escalated during his presidency. In place of concrete action we have disparate information, deliberate manipulation and official distortion of facts which makes every effort to combat Boko Haram and its shoots practically impossible. Nigeria has become a country of anything goes; Boko Haram foot soldiers and their Nigerian sponsors are hiding in plain sight. They are left to roam free because of their position and status in the society. The government has no will power to confront these destroyers because each and everyone in position today has a lot to hide and it has become a dangerous game. The monster they bred as a tool for political intimidation has mutated into something they cannot recognize nor control.
Who would have thought this fate awaits Nigeria? When Jean-Bédel Bokassa was making mincemeat of Central African Republic, we thought it couldn’t happen in Nigeria. Years later, we got Abacha on a platter of ethnic mistrust and greed. When the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and later the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) launched modern day terrorism, we wondered in bewilderment how a people can be willing to blow themselves up just like that! Now we have our own suicide bombers! How did we get here? We got here because of official corruption and total indifference to the needs of the masses by the Nigerian state. We got here because of economic deprivation, despondency, marginalization, frustration, and desperation that faces majority of Nigerians. We got here because religious leaders act in consonant to befuddle the battered psyche of the Nigerian using the religious instrument. 

In his latest media chat, Mr. Jonathan was quoted as saying “stealing is not corruption.” This statement is not only incredible coming from the President of over 170million people, it also means this President is unteachable! He learns nothing and forgets everything ever so conveniently. With him, we have “entered one chance”. Hopefully, there will be something to salvage from Nigeria by 2015. Whether our elites agree or not, this fetid sore of our lives in the name of terror is the latent function of the protracted failure of the Nigerian State to deliver good governance. When all the tiers of government steal the money allocated for hospitals, roads, schools, infrastructure and when its youths are denied good and qualitative education, employment and its elders die for lack of healthcare, welfare and looted pensions; terrorism is what you get. Terrorism is what you get when a country is held sedate by religious merchants, when the youths are battered socially, psychologically and economically. Terrorism is the price we are paying for producing a colony of frustrated, depraved, dejected, deprived and hopeless youths as a consequence of official stealing, graft and general dysfunction.
Boko Haram is difficult to contain because they want to wish it away. It is difficult to fight terror because corruption has eaten deep into the nations security apparatus. Because of corruption, we have a rag tag army who wield inferior weapons compared to the adversaries they are expected to confront. Defense budgets for two decades have gone into private pockets leaving morale at the lowest ever! Soldiers on assignment are not paid their allowances while in the trenches to fight. Nothing is sacred anymore in the country. We seem unaware that corruption as perpetuated by public servants and political office holders creates unemployment, undermines democracy, the rule of law, good governance and security; it also destroys the capacity of institutions to perform well. We are witnessing the early onset of a failed state as the result of the complete metamorphosis of corruption. The country’s elite may not want to draw this parallel so they are not fingered as enablers of terrorism but the variables for the corruption object exists and cannot be erased. Unfortunately the actors do not believe we will all go down with the ship one way or another. The ingredients are complete in the triad of corruption, state neglect and terrorism. No country can have all these three ingredients without brewing massive bloodshed. I cringe at the though of it, but it is true.
For those of us who thinks terrorism is a northern problem I urge a rethink. This is because terror spreads and the fear knows no boundaries. To people of Northern origin; why did Boko Haram emerge from the poorest parts of Northern Nigeria? Why is Boko Haram finding recruitment easier among the lumpen plebeians and in such places where people have not had the opportunity to go to school and have decent source of livelihood? While the influence of religion cannot be downplayed, these colonies of destitutes became major recruiting reservoirs of foot soldiers for Boko Haram due to hopelessness. Otherwise, why is it that the largest chunk of recruits are young adults drawn from the pool of the poor underclass, idle youths with no skills and limited survival options? 

Not knowing where your best meal might come from is a pain and poverty dulls the senses. In generational poverty, life is a series of struggles often marked by anger, despondency, resentment, and despair. Terrorists can easily recruit young people who wants to escape their circumstances, manipulate them to bear arms by promising them a sense of community, acceptance, brotherhood, and commitment to a cause higher than self. The picture of a typical Boko Haram recruit is that of a poor, illiterate and unemployed young man. He wears a profile that lends him to a kind of brainwash that is religious and cultural. He generally lacks the intellectual ability to question established views and beliefs. How do you think the very poor perceive the conspicuous consumption as exhibited by the expensive cars, large and expensive buildings; lavish celebrations of the rich? The youths who lives in generational poverty experience tremendous pressure seeing these everyday.
Let’s not fool ourselves, we must begin to organize more and agonize less. Otherwise, sex perverts will continue to sneak in at odd times to rape our mothers and abduct our girls. Our leaders are busy buying private jets that will help them and their families escape when things get really bad. Those of us who have no private jets and nowhere to run must begin to plan how to defeat terror. The present crop of leaders Nigeria has the tragic misfortune of being blessed with will rather live out their miserable lives in exile in Trinidad and Tobago than build Nigeria. 

Do something on your own to safeguard yourself and start asking questions and hold them to account. The dimensions of our home-grown terror is based on class and gender. Don’t be fooled! The abduction of the Chibok girls confirms the intent to subdue the northern female from getting educated. The patriarchal culture of subduing the female kind in the north must stop. A country that keeps its women subjugated cannot thrive. Osama Bin Laden died surrounded by his choice collection of the best pornographic movies ever made. The bombings are no longer enough, the girl child must be abducted and married off forcefully for N2,000! Islamist terrorists are plain hopeless sex perverts selling hokum to those deluded enough to buy their version of jihadi nonsense and their obsession with female genitalia thinly veiled as safeguarding female purity. 

Is anyone still in doubt over the failure of Mr. Jonathan’s state of emergency? Is anyone still in doubt that this President is a failure? The failure of leadership is glaring here. What use is federal might to this President? Dia ris God ooooo!!!

PremiumTimes

Azonto and presidential dance

by: Sam Omatseye

Before President Goodluck Jonathan visited Kano at the hour hoodlums whisked away 276 girls, I had not heard of Azonto, a popular dance rooted in African rhythm and domesticated by local maestros. It gives grace to the body, exercises the limbs and inspires ecstasy on stage and at parties. The old and young can execute its bold turns. Legs and torsos tighten on its physical toll.

What bothered me, however, was the gory dance in town, the dance by the so-called randy goons of God who zipped away our girls. Nigerian beauties lost in the bosoms of defilers.

But the president did not understand what he did. He felt for the damsels in his own way. However, he does not know how to feel for them as a Nigerian leader. Psychologists call it emotional intelligence, the ability to translate feeling into words and deeds. With that armoury, he can inspire a people to action to save the 276 girls.

If he did not know how to feel, how could he have known that he erred in storming Kano before the campaign season kicked off?

The president should understand he is a leader in times of crisis. Rather, he is a leader in crisis himself. He nestles in Aso Rock and routinely summons his service chiefs. The girls can be any of our sisters, cousins, nieces, daughters, friends, neighbours and potential in-laws.

He has not shown leadership by symbolism, acts or speech. When Boko Haram boys shoot, bomb and kidnap kids, a leader does not leave the stage to protests on the streets. He walks onto the stage and inspires. He gives them speeches; he rouses with his eyes, words and other gestures. He galvanises the troops and flashes the light at the end of the tunnel. But the president has responded with lethargy and languor, as if those on top are asleep. Even if he is asleep, he can still wake up the way Jesus did in a storm-tossed ship and reassured his disciples. His many pastors ought to tell him.

We have seen leaders rise in times of crisis and their actions jolted their generations. Winston Churchill is a potent example. England lay prostrate when Hitler’s army blitzed its way all over Europe and cowed the proud French. Churchill defied fellow leaders who wanted England to sup with the tyrant. Bombs fell daily, defacing England and killing droves. The great British Empire reduced to living on rations and in shelters. But Churchill inspired the nation with speeches and his personal appearances in public. He gave speeches that made the great journalist Ed Morrow to say that he inspired the English language to battle. He said England would fight in the land, on the seas, in the air, on the beeches and ended by saying “we shall never surrender”.

Even if despair came, he had words for his people. “But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.”

Whenever he visited rubbles of war in the city, the suffering compatriots eulogised the courage of their hero.

His counterpart on the other side of the continent, Franklin Roosevelt, who sat on a wheelchair because he had polio, roused his nation in times of the Great Depression. Millionaires committed suicide because their wealth evaporated. The poor could not hope for food and bleakness pervaded America. “We have nothing to fear,” he crooned, “but fear itself”. Learning from Mark Twain, he spoke of the four freedoms, including freedom from want. With a sunny face in spite of his personal handicap, he gingered a nation to rebuild an economy and win the Second World War against the greatest tyranny in history.

In the same era, we had Charles de Gaulle, the cocky Frenchman who levitated a defeated country back to its pride. He formed the Free French and gave speeches from outside the country as a tonic of revival to a disconsolate nation. He is mythicised today as the greatest Frenchman, perhaps since the little general.

Mahatma Gandhi, derided as the little brown man in a loincloth, is in the class of all the others. He was not only a nationalist; he was a humanist of the first rank. By self-sacrifice, moral courage and austere dignity, he coalesced a diverse people against the British. He disarmed them by his disdain for violence and as the first practitioner of Henry David Thoreau’s doctrine of non-violence. Without inspiring a shot, he subdued the biggest empire the world had ever known. Once the Hindus and Muslims did not see eye-to-eye and engaged in zero-sum bloodbath. He did not fight with guns or with words, but with a gesture of self-sacrifice. He would fast until the killings ended. Both Muslims and Hindus stopped the butchery so that Ghandi might live.

When Mandela left jail, he met a people on the verge of a civil war. He inspired them not by aloofness, but by engaging each group with empathy. Perhaps hence he said, “Lead from the front – but don’t leave your base behind”.

President Jonathan can also learn from President Bill Clinton. When he confronted a bad economy, he uttered perhaps his best line, “I feel your pain”.

With now 276 girls missing, we need leadership. We need the girls back with their parents and society, to dream and be human again. Images flood the imagination of what might be happening to the girls. Are they wives in bed with hoodlums, washing their dirty clothes, cooking for them? Are some of them being beaten up for resisting or subjected to all forms of bestialities? Are some of them trying to escape, and did some try and were stopped? Have some escaped but are clueless where they are? Are all of them alive? The zealots no longer want their virgins in heaven but here on earth.

In Homer’s The Iliad, the Greeks rescued Helen, a beauty captured by the Trojans. Hector was a great fighter but he fought to keep Helen in the hands of the kidnappers. The Greeks suffered in battle, and they suffered many dead until Achilles came to the rescue and killed Hector. “By trying”, wrote the poet Theocritus about one of the hardest fought battles of all time, “the Greeks got into Troy”.

Those girls are our Helens, and we need Jonathan to play Achilles and save them by providing leadership.

If history remembers his Azonto dance rather than the girls’ rescue, his would be a tragic presidency. He can redeem it with a victory dance when the girls come home.

TheNation

Aisha Falode: My son was murdered in Dubai

 by: Dare Odufowokan

Ace sports broadcaster and Head, media committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), Aisha Falode, has said that her late son, Oloruntoba, who died on Saturday February 15, 2014, was actually murdered by one Faisal Aldakmary Al-Nasser, a Saudi national and one Olivia Melaine Richards Evans, a Briton.

Falode, who made the statement through her lawyer, Festus Keyamo, in a petition made available to The Nation, also alleged that there is a plot to cover up the alleged murder by the Dubai Police authority.

The Dubai Marina Police Command handled investigations into the death of the 19-yar-old.

Oloruntoba, popularly called Fray, the only son of the frontline media practitioner and a budding rapper, was a student of Audio Production at the SAE Institute in the United Arab Emirate at the time of his untimely death.

Initial report stated that he died in a car crash but a petition sent to the Presidency by Keyamo on behalf of the Falodes revealed that Oloruntoba might have been pushed to his death by his alleged killers on the night of the sad incident.

In the petition which was also copied to the Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Ambassador of Nigeria to the UAE, the grieving mother said written statements and evidences volunteered by eye-witnesses suggest that Al-Nasser pushed Toba off the balcony of the 17th floor of Manchester Towers at Dubai Marina, after a heated argument between the duo.

She said, “Because of the various inconsistencies in the Police Report given to the family after the incident, myself, in company of Mr. Festus Keyamo and another family member, travelled to Dubai in the UAE on Friday, the 18th day of April, 2014 to see and hear things for ourselves. Whilst in the country, we met with the friends of Toba Falode who were present in the apartment on the fateful day.

The friends in question (names withheld) are a South African student, and a Nigerian student, both also studying at the SAE Institute. The summary of the accounts of these friends are totally different from what the Police Report indicated and has revealed a most shameful and disgraceful attempt by the authorities n Dubai to shilled obvious murder suspects from the long arms of the law.

The friends and witnesses in question volunteered written statements to us . That sometimes in December, 2013, the said Faisal Aldakmary Al-Nasser stormed the apartment of the deceased, Oluwadamilola Oloruntoba Falode and ordered Miss Olivia Melaine Richards Evans (his supposed girlfriend) out of Toba’s apartment; accusing her of having an affair with Toba Falode.

That a fight was to have ensued from this confrontation, but for the intervention of other mutual friends. Since then, there was no love lost between Toba and Al-Nasser. That in the evening of 14th of February, 2014, Toba, together with his friends,went to a club in Dubai known as M Deck, Media 1 Hotel, Media City.

That at the club, they again met the said Al-Nasser and Evans who came together to the club. That again, an argument started concerning Evans. Shortly after this, Al-Nasser and Evans left the club. On their return to toba’s apartment, the friends were shocked to find Al-Nasser and Evans waiting. Evans was crying hysterically while Al-Nasser was very calm with a determined look about him.

Toba let them into his apartment. After they all got into the apartment, Toba, Al-Nasser and Evans entered his rom to sort things out. Shortly after, the three of them exited the room and went to the balcony of the apartment on the 17th floor. According to an emphatic witness, a serious argument with raised voices and hands again ensued at the balcony. At some point, the friends opened the curtain and saw this serious confrontation among the three of them going on.

Shortly after, Al-Nasser and Evans came into the apartment and announced that Toba had fallen off the railings. However, Al-Nasser had blood splattered all over his shirt and he had bloody knuckles. There was also a noticeable cut on his finger. It is important to note that when one of the witnesses parted the curtain to see , Toba was not sitting on the railings in the balcony.

The position of Toba’s body was not consistent with someone dropping from the balcony but was consistent with someone that was violently pushed or thrown from the balcony. That the Police arrived thereafter and arrested all of them to the station. That before and during the journey to the station, Al-Nasser kept repeating to the hearing of everyone that the maximum punishment for him would be twenty-five years in jail and that the other boys should not worry.”

Falode argued that given the above account by eye-witnesses, it is shocking that Al-Nasser and Evans were that night released to go home without taking the blood stained T-shirt from Al-Nasser while the other three boys were charged with drinking and other sundry offense and are still facing these charges in court at present.

According to her, it is distressing that Nigerian students living and studying legitimately in so many countries abroad have become subjects of hostilities and murder of late. She therefore urged relevant authorities to wade into the matter and ensure that justice is done in this particular case.

“We call on you to use your good offices to prevail on the authorities in Dubai to re-open the investigation into the murder of Toba Falode and to bring to book Mr. Faisal Aldakmary Al-Nasser and Miss Olivia Melanie Richards Evans both of whom murdered him in cold blood,” she pleaded.

TheNation

Rising global outrage over abducted Chibok girls

It started as a local matter. Now, the abduction of over 200 girls by Boko Haram members in Chibok, Borno State has become an international affair. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau yesterday released a video admitting his group kidnapped the girls. His admission came weeks after the girls’ April 14 kidnapping, with the country not closer to finding them, thus triggering complaints.

On Twitter, there is a globally trending hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. On Sunday, about 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Nigerian High Commission in London, chanting, “Bring them back!” and “Not for sale!” Crowds from Los Angeles to London rallied Saturday as well.

“Access to education is a basic right and an unconscionable reason to target innocent girls,” former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote Sunday on Twitter. “We must stand up to terrorism. #BringBackOurGirls.”

South African President Jacob Zuma said yesterday: “We call on the African Union and the international community to rally behind our sister nation, Nigeria, as it battles a recent spate of terrorism attacks. We condemn terrorism in every shape or form and from whichever quarter it comes from.”

The United States is sharing intelligence with Nigeria to help in the search, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation.

“We are sharing intelligence that may be relevant to this situation. You are going to see a focus on this in all three channels of government: diplomatic, intelligence and military,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.

The scale of the attack is worrisome because it shows the “brazen” lengths Boko Haram will go to and suggests a planning and logistics capability for a large-scale operation, the official said. It is not the first time the group has attacked defenceless schoolchildren.

Last week, United States’ Attorney-General Eric Holder asked U.S. intelligence agencies to prepare a report for him on the kidnapping, as well as an assessment of Boko Haram, according to a U.S. law enforcement official. The assessment could help the Department of Justice seek indictments or curtail funding sources for the group. The FBI had several ongoing investigations into Boko Haram leadership.

The U.S. military is not planning to send troops but will assist with intelligence-sharing and perhaps could help Nigerian forces plan a rescue mission, under existing military cooperation agreements, a second U.S. official with knowledge of the situation said.

The United States could offer satellite imagery and electronic intelligence such as communications intercepts. U.S. Africa Command has long been helping Nigerian forces improve their training and operations to counter Boko Haram militants.

President Barack Obama is being briefed on the attack, and pressure is mounting worldwide for the government to act. Speaking during a visit to Africa, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States “will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice.”

Frida Ghitis, a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review, in a piece for theCNN, said the global community has not done enough to help find the girls.

Ghitis’s piece reads: “ If i t had happened anywhere else, this would be the world’s biggest story.

“More than 230 girls disappeared, captured by members of a brutal terrorist group in the dead of night. Their parents are desperate and anguished, angry that their government is not doing enough. The rest of the world is paying little attention.

“The tragedy is unfolding in Nigeria, where members of the ultra-radical Islamist group Boko Haram grabbed the girls, most believed to be between 16 and 18, from their dormitories in the middle of the night in mid-April and took them deep into the jungle. A few dozen of the students managed to escape and tell their story. The others have vanished. (Roughly 200 girls remain missing.)

“The latest reports from people living in the forest say Boko Haram fighters are sharing the girls, conducting mass marriages, selling them each for $12. One community elder explained the practice as “a medieval kind of slavery.”

“While much of the world has been consumed with other stories, notably the missing Malaysian plane, the relatives of the kidnapped girls in the small town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria have struggled for weeks with no resources to help them. The Nigerian government allayed international concerns when it reported — incorrectly — that it had rescued most of the girls. But the girls were still in captivity. Their parents raised money to arrange private expeditions into the jungle. They found villagers who had seen the hostages with heavily armed men.

“Relatives are holding street protests to demand more help from the government. With a social media push, including a Twitter #BringBackOurGirls campaign, they are seeking help anywhere they can find it.

“Nigerians demand government do more to save abducted girls

It’s hard to imagine a more compelling, dramatic, heartbreaking story. And this is not a one-off event. This tragedy is driven by forces that will grow stronger and deadlier if the captors manage to succeed.

“I think of these girls as trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building. Their mothers and fathers try to dig them out with their bare hands, while the men who brought down the building vow to blow up others. Everyone else walks by, with barely a second glance.

“Perhaps this story sounds remote. But at its heart it is a version of the same conflict that drives the fighting in other parts of the world. These young girls, eager for an education, are caught in the crossfire of the war between Islamic radicalism and modernity. It’s the Nigerian version of the same dispute that brought 9/11.”

to the United States.”

; that brought killings to European, Asian and Middle Eastern cities; the same ideological battle that destroyed the lives of millions of people in Afghanistan; that drives many of the fighters in Syria and elsewhere.

“In Nigeria, the dispute includes uniquely local factors, but the objectives of Boko Haram sound eerily familiar.

“Boko Haram wants to impose its strict interpretation of Sharia — Islamic law. It operates mostly in the northern part of Nigeria, a country divided between a Muslim-majority north and a Christian-majority south. Islamic rule is its larger objective, but its top priority, judging from the group’s name, explains why it has gone after girls going to school.

“Boko Haram, in the local Hausa language, means roughly “Western education is sin.”

“But women are just the beginning, and Boko Haram goes about its goals not only by kidnapping, but also by slaughtering men and women of all ages and of any religion.

“These militants view a modern education as an affront, no matter who receives it. In February, they burst into a student dormitory in the northern state of Yobe, where teenage boys were sleeping after a day of classes. They killed about 30 boys, shooting some, hacking others in their beds, slitting the throats of the ones trying to flee. In July, also in Yobe state, they shot 20 students and their teacher.

“The gruesome attacks are not restricted to remote areas. A few weeks ago, a bus bombing in the capital of Abuja killed more than 75 people. Boko Haram took responsibility. It was the deadliest terrorist act in the city’s history.

“Boko Haram has killed thousands of people since 2009 and has caused a humanitarian crisis with a “devastating impact,” causing nearly 300,000 to flee their homes, according to Human Rights Watch.

“Nigeria is a resource-rich nation whose people live in grinding poverty. It is also plagued with endemic corruption. That triple combination — poverty, corruption and resource-wealth — creates fertile ground for strife and extremism. And the instability in Nigeria sends tremors through a fragile region. Boko Haram keeps hideouts and bases along the border with neighboring countries Cameroon and Chad.

“This is an international crisis that requires international help. Is there anything anyone can do? Most definitely.

“First, it is urgent that the plight of these girls and their families gain the prominence it so clearly deserves.

“Global attention will lead to offers for help, to press for action. Just as the intense focus on the missing Malaysian plane and the lost South Korean ferry prompted other nations to extend a hand, a focus on this ongoing tragedy would have the same effect.

“Nigeria’s government, with a decidedly mixed record on its response to Boko Haram, will find it difficult to look away if world leaders offer assistance in finding and rescuing the kidnapped girls from Chibok, and another 25 girls also kidnapped by Boko Haram in the town of Konduga a few weeks earlier.

“This is an important story, a wrenching human drama, even if it happened in a part of the world where news coverage is very difficult compared with places such as Malaysia, South Korea or Australia.

“The plight of the Nigerian girls should remain in our thoughts, at the forefront of news coverage and on the agenda of world leaders.”

TheNation

We Are All Now from Chibok

Postscript  By Waziri Adio; waziri.adio@thisdaylive.com

As the marchers hit the main road, dark clouds massed in the sky. It was clear that within minutes the sky would open up. But they marched on. And it finally came down, shy at first, then with the ferocious intensity that Abuja rains are known for. Soon, everyone was drenched. The rain kept lashing out, pouring down for almost eternity. But they stayed the course. Neither the elements nor the barricades at the National Assembly would stop them. They kept chanting: “Bring Back Our Girls, Now and Alive.” They were marching for the abducted girls of Chibok.

Among the marchers were mostly well-heeled women. One was a former minister and a former vice-president of the World Bank; another, the wife of a former vice-president of the country; and yet another, the wife of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria. They and their families were not immediately at risk or in distress; and if they were, they wouldn’t be as helpless as those agonising parents in faraway Chibok. These well-heeled women didn’t have to march, and at least not in the rain. But they chose to.

Alongside so many other women and some men, they chose to stand with the stolen girls of Chibok and their distressed parents; they chose to amplify, in the stony seat of power, the faint voices of those burdened with anxiety and grief hundreds of kilometres away; and they chose to demand that government should perform its most important duty to its citizens. It was a moving act of solidarity, a symbolic but powerful gesture that has since been replicated in different parts of the country and in different parts of the world, and might have added to the pressure that finally roused our government to a recent flurry of activities, some of which are still wrong-headed.

Remarkably, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and his deputy also came out in the pounding rain to receive, listen to and re-assure the marchers. Equally remarkable is that the police cleared the way for the marchers, protected them and stood in the rain with them. And among the marchers, coordinated by the Hajia Hadiza Bala Usman-led Women for Peace and Justice, were women and men from different parts of the country and of different stations in life, including some who are physically challenged. It was not only a poignant show of solidarity, but also a touching act of unity, lots of which we will need to win the war against the depraved Boko Haram terrorists.

I went to the march with Olusegun Adeniyi, Chairman of the Editorial Board of THISDAY, straight from this newspaper’s editorial board meeting of April 30. We were embarrassed that the women kept thanking us for joining them. But we don’t have to be women to relate with the girls of Chibok and their parents. Apart from being parents too, we are clear in our mind that identifying, even if symbolically, with the girls of Chibok and their parents is more than mere empathy. It is even more than an affirmation of our shared humanity. It is an exercise in enlightened self-interest, as it is clear that a society that cannot protect the weak will eventually not be safe for the strong and the privileged.

Yes, in demanding that the government should do, and be seen to be doing everything within its powers to ensure that the girls be rescued urgently and alive, we are all doing something for the girls and their parents. But ultimately, we are doing much more for ourselves. This is beyond altruism. A country where school kids could be slaughtered, as in Buni Yadi, or kidnapped, as in Chibok and Konduga before it, without vigorous efforts at protecting or rescuing them by the security forces is definitely hurtling towards state failure.

If not effectively checkmated by both government and society, the Boko Haram terrorists and possible copy-cats would be emboldened to do more. And before you know it, what happened in Chibok could become so commonplace even outside the North-east. The two terrorist attacks in Nyanya, Abuja within two weeks show that we are all now in the frontline of the terror war. So it is in our collective interests to start walking in the shoes of those anxious and grieving parents of Chibok and to start insisting that our government should do its duty by those girls, and ultimately by all of us.

Truth be told, the Nigerian state failed those kids in Konduga, in Buni Yadi, and in Chibok. And in the failing those kids, the state has diminished and failed all of us. To be sure, fighting terrorists is a difficult enterprise even for countries with the most sophisticated armies and the best surveillance systems. Conventional armies are trained and programmed to engage in conventional warfare. Engaging in asymmetrical warfare with those whose sole purpose is to strike soft targets, blow themselves and others up, and convoke a state of fear is still uncharted territory and is never going to be easy. Also, it should be acknowledged that our security forces are stretched too thin, and they have gallantly put their lives on the line to keep us safe and they have done so under very difficult circumstances.

However, we can also insist that the Nigerian state definitely has more capacity than it has put at the service of the abducted girls of Chibok. It is extremely distressing to think that some crazy terrorists would go to a school in a state where emergency rule is in force, operate for hours and herd hundreds of girls into trucks (some of which reportedly broke down on the road), pass through villages before disappearing into the forest unchallenged.

To be sure, it is difficult to prevent all terrorist acts. But the speed and quality of response matter. Who were the first responders after the Chibok incident happened and what level of response did they offer? And if some of the girls could escape by themselves and find their way back home, would a more swift and robust response by our security forces not have yielded better result?

When you add the way the Defence Headquarters bungled information about the release of the Chibok girls with the fact that our president should have known and acted on this tragedy at the time he was dancing in Kano and that it took the marchers and growing international pressure to put the fate of the abducted children high on the agenda of this government, it is clear that we have not pressed the full weight of the state in the service of citizens in distress. Even now that the president has set up a fact-finding committee and the First Lady is summoning people and threatening her own march, it is difficult not to miss the point that more emphasis is on pointing fingers, taking us back to the need to urgently exorcise the persecution mindset that is standing in the way of necessary action.
Even if it is established beyond reasonable doubt that the Borno State Government was negligent or complicit in the abduction of the girls or that there is serious discrepancies in the number of missing girls and that the president’s political opponents are the sponsors of Boko Haram, all these do not excuse the tardy way the Nigerian government has responded so far nor remove the president’s obligation to those girls. (Just imagine what an American president or a British prime minister would have done in a similar situation.) Now that the government seems to have woken up, it shouldn’t get distracted by a predictable lapse into fault-finding. The urgent task is to rescue the girls and secure the rest of us.

Also, now that Wyclef Jean, Chris Brown, Erykah Badu, Mary J. Blige, Malala Yousafzai, and others including Western NGOs and media organisations have helped to internationalise the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, we as citizens of Nigeria can all do more to ensure that our government does its job, and that it does it competently, and does it on time. Government’s failure to secure lives should not be an option; neither should self-help. That can only foreshadow the road to Mogadishu. So if you can’t march for the Chibok girls, write about them (even if on Facebook or Twitter or BBM), sign a petition, or at least offer some prayers. No action or gesture is too small for these girls, and ultimately for ourselves. Let’s build on the remarkable unity demonstrated by those rain-soaked marchers because Boko Haram is our common enemy. We are all now from Chibok.

ThisDay