State failure from Buni Yadi, through Chibok to Kankara

Before we swing into conspiracy theory territory, let us congratulate the parents of the 344 school pupils who went to the house of death and despair but somehow made it back to life. It is not important for now, whether a ransom was paid for the release of these children or that they reappeared by divine intervention. At every moment, but most especially during the Yuletide season, the wish of every parent is to be surrounded at home by his or her children.

Unfortunately, the wanton case of mass kidnapping for ransom is reaching alarming proportions in Nigeria. As the people of Kankara count their blessings, their joy rakes up old wounds in households that are not so lucky. On February 25, 2014 at the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, in Yobe State when Boko Haram struck, they took no prisoners, they slaughtered 49 students in cold blood.

• Boko Haram: 5 soldiers killed, 35 civilians kidnapped in new attack
• Rescued or released: Who should we believe on return of Kankara boys?

The Nigerian State failed those students at the most critical moment of their lives; they left their hapless parents and families in inconsolable grief. Those parents would have given anything in the world to swap places with Kankara parents. Their ardent wishes would have been to be spared such tragedy. The Nigerian state has done nothing to remember those innocent souls abruptly terminated, nothing to say – never again! Their memories have been deleted from national consciousness.

Barely two months after that atrocious incident, Boko Haram showed up in a secondary school in Chibok town, Borno State. They abducted nearly 300 female students from that school and disappeared into Sambisa forest, which they have now claimed from the Nigerian state. A huge chunk of those girls have been released, rescued or escaped. We know that some of the girls have died in captivity and the remaining have been appropriated and converted to unwilling wives by their captors.

Again, while there had been shouts of joy in Kankara after the return of the 344, there would have been the need for anti-depressants by all Chibok parents. Chibok has been attacked severally since and the rehabilitation of the school only began lately. It is a sad denouement that the Nigerian state fails its citizens at their hour of need.

A state that cannot guarantee the life of its citizenry is a failed state even if it flies a flag; holds elections and parades elected officials. No state worth its salt makes excuses when its citizens, especially its children are targeted this way. Unfortunately serial failure is the only known hallmark of governance in Nigeria. In 2014, Goodluck Jonathan was losing the entire country to his inability to understand the concept of governance or responsibility.

Under Jonathan, the wackiest conspiracy theories were invented to excuse the lassitude of governance. His government successfully purged Buni Yadi from national consciousness, and questioned how an educationally backward north could have 276 female students in one school in Chibok.

Rather than find a way to bring back the girls, Mrs. Jonathan (who is not an elected official of state, at the federal level) summoned WAEC officials and the school principal to dramatise her ‘born troway’ philosophy. Her crocodile tears on national television are eternal meme for comic skits. We have perfected the act of laughing at national calamities. The Chibok scar is blood on the hands of all those who could have done something, even a sense of outrage, but chose to make it a comedy of governance. The blood remains on their hands and the scab is on their conscience.

Come 2018, and General Buhari witnessed the abduction of 110 schoolgirls in Dapchi. All but the only Christian girl, Leah Saribu were returned. Leah has remained in captivity and basically slipped out of national consciousness.

As we welcome back Kankara boys, bandits have abducted about 80 girls an Islamiyya school in Unguwar Al-Kassim. The Unguwar Al-Kasim girls were returning from Maulid celebrations puncturing the narrative that there is a religious stamp on these crimes.

The big question is – what lessons have we learnt as a nation? We have done little to repair the broken walls of national outrage neither have we executed a plan for initiation into the multiplurality of our blessed existence. Just because northern elites make selfish and outlandish claims, we have assumed that they speak the minds of the majority. They don’t!

The fact that the federal character principle has been used by recycled ruling elites and that nepotism has been elevated into a national pastime; the north, worst hit by underdevelopment is unable to garner the national and international empathy needed to show that the mere holding of political office has not benefitted the north.

Unfortunately, the intensity of parochial engagement with national polity has done nothing to clear the erroneous impression that although the north is educationally disadvantaged and nothing serious has been done to reverse the trend, we are not entirely averse to boko, or western education anymore than we prefer horses to cars. Communities are not unaware that the world we live in is changing and that to gainfully engage, one needs a minimal level of western education, so they are responding. Any attack on that response should be viewed as treason and treated as such.

It is shameful that even today, there are those who doubt that there 344 students in Kankara. They say because the returnees did not speak the Queen’s English, they must be almajirai. Similar doubts undermined the rescue of our Chibok girls. Unfortunately, it is worse now because we have a federal government that has locked down tertiary education for a substantial chunk of its term in office.

It is okay to snigger at the North’s underdevelopment but silly to think it would remain there.  Just because the quality of education has diminished nationally does not mean that there are no schools in the north, or that northerners don’t embrace western education.

In times of national tragedies, as kidnappings have become, we diminish our national status pushing insane narratives that seeks to portray one region as backward and another as progressive. Such narratives play into the hands of our enemies than they help us push the ruining class into taking action before a ‘regional’ problem becomes a national malaise.

A serious government ought to declare a state of emergency on security. A good leadership at the national level ought to take a minimal token to realign governance. General Buhari has not shown any reason why he is different from Goodluck Jonathan, a bloody civilian. If anything, it is becoming increasingly obvious that his regime is worse than the one it electorally overthrew. He has kept elephants feeding fat on dwindling national reservoir who contribute absolutely nothing to redeeming the nation. If he is in touch with reality and has any modicum of respect for his laurels as a general, he should rejig his cabinet, and reorganise the security apparatchik of this nation.