CHIBOK: CAN WE REALLY STILL BRING THE GIRLS BACK?

Its now almost two years since the sad incident that saw over 200 girls taken away in the sleep by a group of Boko Haram fighters, and driven purportedly into the Sambisa forest. After an initial wave of denial by the then administration, the nation had to confront the issue. But try as we all did, we have not been able to get the girls back since then.

During the last general elections, the now ruling party told the nation they had the formula that they will use to the girls back. They have been around for about 7 months now, and apparently the formula did not work, or has not yet worked.

The #Bringbackourgirls campaigners are still harassing the government everyday, and the citizenry still expect that the government should be doing more than they are to get this issue resolved. However, spate after spate of suicide bombings carried out mostly by young girls, I ask myself, “who are these girls who are blowing themselves up with their victims?”

We learnt from the army that these girls would typically have been brainwashed by their leaders not to think anything of blowing themselves to smithereens. The army also told us that sometimes, these girls are blackmailed to doing this, with the Boko Haram soldiers holding the girls’ families hostage as a leverage on the girls.

My mind went over this, and I asked myself very quietly, “could the Boko haram be using some of these Chibok girls as suicide bombers”? If that were so, it means we can never bring back all the girls alive.

We also have found some escaped female Boko Haram prisoners with most of them impregnated by these people regardless of their previous marital status. So I asked again, even if we get these girls back, would they not already be damaged? And if they have been married off to some fighter and they are now either carrying a pregnancy or a child for the fighter, would these girls even want to leave any longer?

Either way, it is a very sad situation for the girls and their families, but as the days go by, the possibility that we will still be able to find the over 200 girls huddled together in one place, intact is getting more unrealistic. I think we need to, as a nation, start to look at the possibility that the girls may not come back, or may not come back the way they left, or that some or all of the remaining girls, if they were still alive, will not even want to come back to their former lives.

It is sad, but sometimes we have to deal with realities such as these. It is the same reality that the families of those passengers of that ill fated Malaysian airlines that disappeared of the map of the world will have had to resign themselves to by now; that their beloved can possibly not be alive anymore as at this moment. Sad! Sad!! Very sad!!!