Between the road to Chibok and the flight to China

On what should have been one of the sweetest moments of the Buhari presidency, most people could not differentiate Chibok from China. The way the president’s China trip was planned; it would appear that saboteurs deliberately made sure that the gains from China are eclipsed by events in Chibok. To the mischievous, there is an uncanny relationship between the road to Chibok and a flight to China.
After listening to a BBC reporter’s harrowing journey to Chibok, where over 200 girls were kidnapped two years ago, Chibok looked like the back of civilization, a scar on the conscience of a nation playing the ostrich with posterity. China is a huge country of 1.4 billion people. Although poor, like Naija, China’s leaders are smart for their size. They do not produce oil or heavy metals; yet they have a robust foreign reserve. Derided as backward, China does not pretend to play by international rules. Its economic interest is metered on its national interest. It doesn’t pander to human rights. If it finds an official guilty of corruption, it tries him and reduces prison population and the feeding bill by executing him – with one bullet, no wastage of pellets! If China learns of a technology its prodigious citizens have not invented, it pays its spies to steal it, encourages its industrialists to improve on it and floods the world with it.
The Chinese currency, the Yuan may not be the international currency of exchange, but it is now globally gazetted as a currency of reckoning. What that means is that a Chinese farmer could go from Guangzhou to Ottawa with their cards loaded with the stuff. Try that with the Naira and film your reaction when your bank sends you the alert.
Not many leaders endure the jetlag to pump the hands of Chinese officials and return home with bilateral goodies. But Sai Baba’s Turare has done that – so eat your heart out wailers. This is good news except you are a youth saddled with the responsibility of paying back the huge national debt. If you are, pray that by the time death wrestles your ambition from those who recycle themselves in government, crude oil is still a relevant commodity. As far as corruption goes, Sai Baba’s Turare is a globally acclaimed locust repellant, so relax, the Chinese bailout is safely in the kitty and unlikely to feature in 2023 Panama inquisition. Thank God for small mercies.
China is the ultimate superpower and those who fail to build bridges of understanding with it now fail to understand the logic that makes Idang Alibi caution swamp dwellers to be nice to their ferry operators ahead of the flood. When Sai Baba returned from China last week, there were no presidential bagpipes kitted in green-white-green kilts in the welcome party. No BBC, CNN or foreign reporters. On the global news scale a presidential trip to Chibok would have been more symbolic.
It was two years ago last week that the rustic town of Chibok became the meter of our national conscience. Boko haram broke through the walls of a female hostel under the cover of darkness and forever stole the innocence of nearly 300 young girls. Even for a pachyderm, the regime of the time felt embarrassed enough to try to hush it with rhetorical questions. How could a territory noted for upgrading child marriage, raising under aged VVF patients and almajiri kids claim to have registered 300 girls for WAEC? Where is pictorial evidence that girls were missing? Why did the governor not frog jump to then Rock of Offense to report to the commander of thieves?
These illegitimate questions preceded the welfare of the ‘missing’ girls. It led to the staging of the crocodile tear-jerking epic titled – Diarisgod – Part 1 and the candidatorial promise to bring home the girls by December last year. Indeed, while reviewing that electoral promise, wailers swore that the Kaduna or Daura mafia was complicit in the whole Chibok abduction. In lands that make money from baby factories, a suspect mafia would do anything to take back political power – even staging the abduction of its own children.
For hailers, the girls were technically rescued last December when the Boko haram war was technically won. So how come that presidential diary keepers could not see that whatever gains, came from China would be dwarfed by the embarrassing notoriety of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign so close to the second anniversary? Are we to assume that the infamous Boko Haram in the presidency is still there? Embarrassing how the technically defeated Boko haram managed to sneak in a video-interview of 15 of the missing girls now identifiable beyond political doubt to be alive. This evidence has tragically forced China goodies into the back of political consciousness and made even our propaganda minister admit that the video was being assessed.
The consolation is that this anniversary too shall pass with rallies and promises. For Chibok mothers, the canji, they know is that the Rock of Offense is now Camp Buhari – a place where a new president comes to rest from jetlag. What they need is communication that a government is working for the safe return of their girls now that the video has trimmed the wick of their candles of hope.