By Okey Ndibe
A peculiarly
Nigerian type of frenzy happened last week. The event was triggered by a report
that a young woman named Amina Ali Nkeki, one of the more than 200 Chibok
schoolgirls abducted in the night of April 14, 2014, had been rescued. The
initial reports disclosed that a vigilante group rescued Amina last Tuesday, as
she wandered along the edges of Sambisa Forest in the company of a man, who
claimed to be her husband, but was suspected to be a Boko Haram insurgent, and
a four-month baby in her arms.
*Amina Ali Nkeki, rescued Chibok girl meets President Buhari |
From there,
it was brouhaha all the way. Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State
feted the 19-year-old mother. Then, a day later, President Muhammadu Buhari
welcomed Amina and her baby to Aso Rock, his official residence. The
misfortunate woman was cast in a dizzying drama that featured photo-ops,
speeches and global media coverage. The president cradled Amina’s baby in his
arms, as he and others beamed for the cameras. Speaking on behalf of the
Nigerian state, the president promised that Amina would receive the best
physical, psychological and emotional healthcare Nigeria can provide.
You’d
think, watching all the excitement, that all 219 schoolgirls, not just one, had
been spirited from their abductors. But that was the one narrative, thumbed
with the imprimatur of the Nigerian state. There was an album of
counter-narratives, running the gamut from those who insisted that the whole
thing was an abject hoax, a stage-managed political theatre, to those who
believe that the abduction saga never happened in the first place.
Last
Thursday, two days after Amina’s rescue, the Nigerian military announced a
second rescue, of a youngster named Serah Luka. It was as if a slow momentum
was building up, Nigeria
on the cusp of finding and liberating the 200 odd victims, who are not
accounted for.
But the
second success story turned out a dud. Chibok parents as well as activists, who
pressed former President Goodluck Jonathan – and are pressing Mr. Buhari – to
bring back the schoolgirls questioned the military’s claim that Serah was one
of the schoolgirls. Neither her name nor image was on the roster of the missing
schoolgirls.
Whether
it was an honest mistake or a calculated fib, the misidentification of Serah,
as one of the Chibok schoolgirls further fueled conspiracy theories. The first
and second rescues were seen as politically orchestrated maneuvers, a plot by
the Buhari administration and its champions to deflect attention from biting
economic crises and deepening social misery.
Some
doubters wondered why Amina, who was supposed to be sitting certificate exams
at the time of her abduction, was incapable of expressing herself in English.
Her apparent incapacity fed speculations that she was chosen and cast in a
contrived melodrama.
This
theory’s currency and traction demonstrate the depth of Nigeria ’s
fragmentation. I doubt that a plot as audacious as the feigned abduction of 200
plus schoolgirls could have been pulled off and sustained for more than two
years. One inclines to a different theory. It is possible that Amina is a victim
of an educational system that delivers little or no curricular content. As a
Fulbright lecturer in Nigeria
in 2002, I encountered English students whose proficiency in the language was
simply awful. When I asked a student why she had not switched off her phone,
she answered, “I thought I off it.” I asked her to correct herself, and she
answered, “I thought I offed it.” Many a student could not make a complete
sentence without mixing in pidgin.
Nigerian
education, like other vital sectors of the country’s life, has been devastated
by decades of neglect, poor funding and a certain cultural disdain for learning
and enlightenment. Most Nigerians have no praying chance of receiving good
healthcare – unless they have the funds to fly away to destinations like India , the UK ,
South Africa , Dubai or the US .
In a
perverse sort of way, then, Amina is “lucky” that abduction catapulted her to
celebrity status. Most women of her social station have no access to physical
or psychological care, however serious or traumatic their ailment. What should
be a given – decent healthcare – becomes a rare and extraordinary treasure
bestowed by presidential fiat on the odd beneficiary.
For me,
the question isn’t whether Amina represents a political ruse but why the
military establishment of Africa’s most populous country hasn’t been able to
comb Sambisa Forest for more than 200 schoolgirls
abducted more than two years ago. I am amazed that the military and the
political authorities would make such fuss over the accidental – not planned –
rescue of a solitary captive. One found the air of celebration around Amina
altogether embarrassing. What kind of mindset would see what happened – the
rescue of one out of 219 still missing girls – as an occasion to blow the
trumpet?
I’m not
puzzled that the official narrative has triggered contrarian impulses. The
contending narratives point to a festering wound at the heart of the uneasy
collectivity called Nigeria .
Amina, Serah and Sambisa
Forest are metaphors of a
country whose malaise is deep-rooted, increasingly troubling, and potentially
tragic.
The
malaise plays out on social media, an arena where Nigerians position themselves
on different sides of the partisan, ethnic and religious divides and take
delight in savaging one another, often hurling javelins of toxic epithets at
real or imagined adversaries on the other side. To peek into some social media
forums is to become aware of the Rwandaisation of Nigeria. Where there should
be conversations or robust debates, too many Nigerians are content to reach for
animal imagery in debasing the “Other,” whoever he or she may be. Some
“educated” Nigerians exhibit little or no restraint in speech. They gleefully
portray members of other ethnic groups or faiths, as personifications of evils.
The
bloody path to the 1994 Rwandan genocide – in which more than 500,000 people,
most of them Tutsi, were massacred in less than four months – was prepared by
Hutu demagogues, who invented the name “cockroaches” for their would-be Tutsi
victims. It was no wonder that so many people were enthusiastic participants in
the orgy of killing. Once you imbibe the depraved baptism that fellow human
beings are cockroaches, it becomes relatively – perhaps extremely – easy to
kill them.
But
Nigerians don’t need to travel all the way to Rwanda to gain a chastening sense
of history. Long before Rwanda ,
there was the Biafran War. More than two million people perished in a war whose
raison d’ĂȘtre was to keep Nigeria ,
a bequest of colonial Britain ,
one.
Mr.
Buhari’s burden is to view and treat every Nigerian with the same concern and
solicitude he showed to Amina. All Nigerians, not just Amina, deserve access to
sound healthcare, good education, and the opportunity to realise their
potential.
Please, follow me on twitter @okeyndibe
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