The failure to deal effectively with the fallout of Chibok has arguably opened the floodgates.
The kidnapping of 276 female students of Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State on 14 April 2014 thrust Nigeria into a trajectory of global notoriety. The mass kidnapping also entrenched Boko Haram, previously viewed as a largely ragtag group of militant religious zealots, into worldwide prominence.
The fight against Boko Haram subsequently attained a new urgency after the initial lethargic response of the federal government. Stocktaking is essential after 10 years since the Chibok kidnapping.
Fifty-seven of the girls were believed to have escaped from their abductors on the night of their capture. Through a combination of negotiations by third parties, plus ransom payment, direct military action, individual initiatives and sheer luck, many of the victims have returned home.
Nonetheless, over 90 of the young women remain missing. The millions of hard currencies used in negotiations, evidence shows, have enabled Boko Haram to purchase new and more sophisticated weapons. Its commanders released in exchange for the victims have also largely returned to the trenches.
The cost has been quite steep in other heart-wrenching ways: Nearly 50 of the parents of the victims have died while waiting for the return of their children. Although the military has, so far, done a poor job of providing timely and up-to-date casualty figures, several men and women of the Nigerian armed forces have paid the supreme sacrifice in the theatre of war in the North-east.
There have been other mass kidnappings at school sites since Chibok. For example, 110 students were kidnapped in Dapchi, Yobe State in February 2018. "Bandits" formally entered the mass school kidnapping fray in December 2020, with the abduction of 303 students at Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State.
On 17 February 2021, bandits also kidnapped 41 students in Kagara, Niger State. Zamfara State was next on 26 February 2021, as 317 female students were abducted. Kaduna State was the site of the mass kidnapping thereafter, with 398 students taken on 11 March 2021 at the College of Forestry, Afaka.
In April 2021, about 20 students were snatched at Greenfield University, Kaduna State. Mass kidnapping operations returned to Niger State on 30 May 2021, when over 100 students were taken at the Niger Muslim school. The list is not exhaustive.
The failure to deal effectively with the fallout of Chibok has arguably opened the floodgates. Schools have become targets of miscellaneous non-state collectives with varying agendas. From Boko Haram's ideological motivation against the education of young girls and contestation over the "place" of women in society, to the bandits' commercialisation of schoolchildren's abduction, this phenomenon does not have to be accepted as the natural order of things in Nigeria.
How did we get here? Much has been made of missing security personnel in Chibok and other schools that have been targeted. Indeed, Nigeria's police-to-civilian ratio is abysmal. However, it is worth emphasising that no society deploys police personnel to all its schools at any given time. Therefore, while we are correct to examine the security architecture of schools, this issue is not a mere policing problem.
Concerns in Nigeria's political process are spilling over to generate insecurity in our schools and across Nigeria. For example, Lieutenant General Kenneth Minimah, who served as Chief of Army Staff, gave a frank assessment in Daily Trust in August 2015.
Minimah stated that the war against Boko Haram would have yielded a different outcome, "if we had all stood against the terrorists at the onset through public condemnation of their activities and active collaboration with the military to confront them...(r)ather than use it as a tool to advance sectional, tribal, religious and political interests."
In other words, mass kidnappings of children persist because we have made it a political, ethnic and religious issue, rather than a societal problem that must be eradicated. In the Chibok case, President Goodluck Jonathan was initially convinced that no kidnapping had occurred. When the evidence suggested otherwise, the narrative of his government was that the kidnapping was to "embarrass" the administration and ensure its loss in the 2015 presidential election.
President Jonathan's spokesperson, Doyin Okupe, indicated that the #BringBackOurGirls Movement was intended to "sustain and internationalise the embarrassment" of the Jonathan government.
Presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari contributed to the toxic political atmosphere by openly criticising military operations in the North-east, asking that the government engages with Boko Haram, as President Umaru Yar'Adua had negotiated with Niger Delta militants. This was political opportunism at its ugliest. He knew better as a retired general.
The cancer of corruption has also plagued the response of our security system. General Minimah, who provided a succinct analysis before the democratisation of mass kidnapping of schoolchildren in Nigeria, exemplifies the situation: He was indicted on corruption charges and allegedly returned N1.7 billion to government coffers.
The execution of the war on insecurity - linked rhetorically with the imperative of rescuing all the Chibok girls by President Buhari during his inaugural address in May 2015 - for personal gain at the detriment of rank-and-file troops, has led soldiers to describe the operations as a "rubbish mission." One soldier noted that "(t)he integrity of the system is no longer there... the more we die, the more money they make."
It is hard to win the war against terrorism, insurgency, banditry and mass kidnapping when frontline troops do not believe in the mission and feel that they are being sent to die for a country that does not care about them and their families.
The abduction of the Chibok girls attained global resonance due to the activities of the #BringBackOurGirls movement. Elite women, led by the likes of Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili and Hadiza Bala Usman, among others, and their middle-class allies, began a series of protests in April 2014 in Abuja to pressure the federal government to rescue the Chibok girls.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
We now know that despite the global social and traditional media coverage, heads of state who held #BBOG placards did little or nothing to actually help rescue the girls.
There is evidence demonstrating that the global agitation for the Chibok girls by the #BBOG likely prolonged their captivity, as they became highly valuable assets in the hands of Boko Haram. The #BBOG activists performed their civic duty to give the girls a fighting chance of survival. The country might have simply moved on as it did after the massacre of 59 high school boys in Buni Yadi, Yobe State, approximately two months before the Chibok kidnapping.
The federal government did not acknowledge the incident until its first anniversary. It is also instructive that some of the girls rescued from Boko Haram returned to their terrorist "husbands" as a result of inhospitable conditions in the conventional society.
Overall, Chibok provides incontrovertible evidence of the country we have built. The kidnapping of schoolchildren has ended up in political power games and avenues for corrupt enrichment within governmental and non-governmental circles.
As Nigeria marks the 10th anniversary of the Chibok kidnapping, it is important to remember the victims who remain in captivity, the parents who have died of heartbreak and the Kibaku people ravaged by the episodic attacks of boys and men we failed to educate or provide any form of skill for meaningful employment to.
Let us also remember that this ought not to be the natural order of things: A country ought to be able to protect its children.
