The security ruses against Chibok Movement

For over two months, security agencies have harassed and sought to intimidate our movement incessantly. The latest was the statement yesterday accredited to the Deputy Director of Department of State Security, Mrs. Marilyn Ogar who described the #BringBackOurGirls campaign as a franchise. She made the comment in Abuja while responding to questions from journalists at the press briefing of the National Information Centre (NIC). This is a dangerous and unprecedented attack because as is well known in security circles, the term “franchise” is used to refer to inter-related terrorist cells. She is reported to have said that if indeed our movement “was a protest group it would not need to force members to register and wear tags.”

Mrs. Ogar also affirmed “security forces know about all the activities of the group. We know that they have a bank account,” she said. “We know that they visit prominent individuals to solicit funds; we know that they have split themselves into groups; we know that they want to simulate a protest march in Abuja to make it look like they went to Chibok.” There is a clear attempt to smear our work with a link our work with Chibok and Sambisa forest. It is clear from these comments that the security agencies are setting up the movement for a crackdown based on trumped up accusations.

Our activities are open and our meetings are in a public space, the Unity Fountain. There is no compulsion to membership and our symbols such as the red t-shirts, face caps and pins are donated voluntarily by members. We are motivated by empathy and the need to search and rescue these girls. We are shocked that all we get from our security agencies is harassment, vilification, innuendoes and threats. This must stop. Security agencies have the responsibility to protect rather than intimidate citizens trying to do a good turn.

It will be recalled that on 8th May, the Director of Defence Information of the Defence Headquarters had alleged that we distorted the report of what was for us constructive engagement with them two days previously. He claimed that we were trying to pitch public opinion against the armed forces and to project the Nigerian military in bad light and further heat-up the polity. The release further claimed that we were trying to drag the military into politics. The statement by Mrs. Ogar yesterday was escalating this accusation to a higher level.

We wish to state unequivocally that our objectives were and remain to engage constituted authority in Nigeria and our security agencies as allowed by our Constitution. We are simply engaged in civic action that is constructively seeking pathways towards achieving what we consider to be the collective objective of bringing back our girls.

For the avoidance of doubt, we have always been and remain a single-issue coalition without any political, religious, ethnic or regional dimensions to our struggle. We are conscious of our rights and responsibilities as citizens and we are exercising them to remind government of their own responsibilities to provide security to citizens and rescue those in distress. We cannot be stopped from exercising our citizenship rights through intimidation. Far from seeking to undermine the efforts of the security agencies, we seek to enhance it and make it more robust and effective. Our concerns about the lack of results so far, 87 days after these girls have been abducted, are aimed at motivating the security agencies to more effective action.

Finally, rather than see our civic action calling on the government and its security agencies to do their work as enemy action, we urge them to take action against the real enemies who are the terrorists who have abducted and kept in captivity for almost three months over two hundred innocent Nigerian girls.

Former Education Minister, Dr Oby Ezekwesili had reportedly dismissed insinua¬tions that she is being used by the opposition to lead the campaign for the rescue of over 200 schoolgirls abduct¬ed by Boko Haram insurgents from Govern¬ment Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state since April 14. She explained why she is at the forefront of the #bringbackourgirls advocacy.

Ezekwesili, who have since then been at the forefront of the #bringbackourgirls ad¬vocacy wondered why Nigeria has turned to a society where people no longer bother about the welfare of fellow citizens, most importantly, the vulnerable. Ezewesili insisted that being a mother coupled with her love for hu¬manity has been her motivation to campaign for the rescue of the Chibok girls.

According to her “Our common humanity has been traumatized so badly that people would dare question why anybody would raise a voice concerning the daughters of peasants in Chibok just because they are not part of the elite. And so, whatever hap¬pens to them, we should all just carry on with our normal life. The reason that I am part of this as a strong advocate for these girls is because I have a soul. I will be ac¬countable to my maker if it would actually be said of me that I was in this country at a time that over 234 children are still missing and I simply couldn’t be bothered.”

For Hadiza Bala Usman, she was inspired to become part of the BBOG, by the fact that a little group, a small local government area somewhere in Borno State was crying out for help, their daughters had been abducted and nobody was saying anything. “I was moved as a woman and mother. When I imagined those mothers going to sleep every night without knowing where their daughters were. I was moved as a Nigerian, especially the fact that our security apparatuses are not doing what we expect from them as citizens”.

Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, a transparency advocate, was one-time cabinet minister in Nigeria and lately a Vice President at the World Bank; and Ms. Hadiza Bala Usman is coordinator of the #BringBackOurGirls Movement.