Nigeria: Chibok Girls and the Right to Dissent

opinion

As I write there is still no hope in sight that the almost 300 Chibok school girls, abducted some 41 days ago would soon come home to the embrace and relieve of their parents and relatives. You do not have to be a parent to know what they would be going through as they hope against hope that by some strange contrivance their children would simply re-appear, as if some unseen conjuror with magic powers has spirited them away from their captors . What parent can bear with equanimity the ordeal of a daughter whose presence in the family has hitherto been taken for granted, whose routine of existence is known to the last detail--the time she wakes up in the morning to prepare for school, when she comes back and set about helping in the house chores, what she prefers for dinner etc,?

Now all this has become mere painful memory as the parent no longer perceives her familiar body odour whenever she brushes pass, nor hears her peculiar footfalls that tell you she has arrived from school or even an errand, no longer does she hear the tenor of her voice whenever she croons those meaningless songs that the youth sing these days-- all these facts and realities of her existence have suddenly disappeared into thin air, snatched away by those sworn to turning our collective daily existence into ghoulish nightmare. All you have left is not to let the ember of hope die, hope that her abductors would have a prick of conscience, as if awakened to the horrendous atrocity of their act and simply set her and the others free. Unconditiionally.

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