Commemoration: #ChibokGirls

SIR: On a day like this, laughter is a costly tranquilizer with side effects. Happiness, struggles to become a necessity, but one that cannot be afforded. On a day like this, we mourn together as a nation, not for the loss we bear, or hope that has withered away, but for our collective inability to get them back, for our failure. No imagination, regarding their feelings, can better capture what “state” they are in right now and what they are going through.

The primary responsibility of any government in any nation, even as empowered by its constitution, is the protection of its citizens as well as their properties. This constitutional does not state that you have to belong to any “class” in the society before it can be offered. The poor, the rich, the big and the small, the high and the low etc, all have an equal share with no one’s priority superseding the other.

Coming from a country where only the rich, the mighty and the big are cared for, the Chibok girls never stood a chance of relevance and concern to the government, thus their continued stay in captivity till date.

No political leader in Nigeria ever brought up their issues, when they did eventually, it was to score a political point and nothing more. Sad as this may sound, 219 schoolgirls are languishing in captivity due to the political unwillingness of our leaders to do the right thing for the right reason.

When Paris was hit, 12 people were killed; world leaders held hands together and had a solidarity march, a march that ignited fear in the minds of the terrorists, a march that sent a strong message of war to the terrorists and hope to the people of Paris.

Before the Charley Hebdo attack, 59 Buniyadi schoolboys were slaughtered in their hostels in Nigeria.

Then again on April 14, 2014, 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped from their hostels, but no single world leader spoke out, let alone calling on themselves to hold hands and march as they did in Paris and so I ask, is it because it is Nigeria, because it happened to a Black nation? Many will argue that the international community has not or did not abandon us or the Chibok girls, but I say that the international community is doing very little or nothing at all to expedite the rescue of the schoolgirls.

So the question is ‘who failed the Chibok girls?’- The Nigerian nation or the world? You choose.

Jeff Okoroafor, Founder, OpinionNigeria