Beneath the Tamarind Tree

by Isha Sesay

  To understand how Nigerians could respond to a mass outrage of this nature by calling it a “fake news” story requires the unpacking of a confluence of factors. First, the fact that the kidnapping occurred in the north touched on the historic tensions that beset the relationship between Nigeria’s largely Muslim north and its predominantly Yoruba and Igbo Christian south. The union of these two regions, which created Nigeria in 1914, came about unnaturally, courtesy of Britain. Spurred on by imperialist ideas, its arrogant colonialists made the decision wholly for the economic gain of the British empire, paying little attention to the religious, ethnic, and social strife such a move would trigger.

  In the decades since, a significant number of northerners felt increasingly sidelined by the nation’s Christian leaders, who they believe continue to deny the region its rightful share of resources for economic development, which in turn has led to higher levels of poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment in the north than in the south. Over the years, this resentment has burst into view in the form of one military coup after another, each of which severely rocked the nation. In an effort to contain this discontent, the nation’s power brokers reached a critical agreement: every two terms the presidency would rotate between an individual from the north and the south of the country. Yet even with this deal in place, the political animus remained and factored into support that grew for the ideology of Mohamed Yusuf, who founded Boko Haram in the early 2000s.

  Emotions were already running high at the start of 2014. With every month that rolled by, the political discourse became increasingly charged as the following year’s presidential election drew closer. The incumbent president Jonathan, a Christian from the Niger delta in the south, had already served out two terms but was still signaling his intention to mount another run for the presidency, in open defiance of the power-sharing agreement. The mere idea of it incensed northerners, and almost immediately the question taken up by the president’s critics became that of what it would take to oust Jonathan from office. This was the backdrop when hundreds of girls from the north seemingly disappeared into thin air. To the administration and the president’s supporters, the timing of the mass abduction was proof: this was the work of northern conspirators who had devised the ploy to disrupt Jonathan’s reelection chances, and without delay they quickly cried foul. Even when they realized that the majority of the missing girls weren’t Muslim but were Christians like the president himself, it did nothing to lessen the belief that this was a plot to energize northern Muslim voters and to depict the president as weak and unable to keep the country safe from Boko Haram. The Nigerian public found itself divided when it came to the veracity of what happened in Chibok, and this in turn created a feedback loop that benefited the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. Most in his government believed enemies had orchestrated the events in Chibok, so they were in no rush to mount a robust response and as there wasn’t the public pressure to do so, the administration defaulted to its do-nothing position.

  What happened in Nigeria had many similarities to events that would play out in the 2016 US election, where we saw candidate Trump, and eventually President Trump, weaponize information and stoke a climate of confusion in a divided country. In the case of Nigeria, the suggestion that events in Chibok were somehow unreal, or had been set into motion by people with a political agenda, sowed just enough doubt to limit what should have been wholesale outrage and widespread calls to hold the government accountable for its obvious inaction.

  Those pushing the narrative of a northern Nigeria political hoax had a host of factors on their side. Chibok was practically beyond the reach of the entire world, except for the Nigerian military, hidden behind a cordon put in place by the state of emergency. Journalists were forbidden from traveling to Chibok, and even those with the inclination to do so faced a logistical and security nightmare to reach this town, which lay in the Boko Haram heartland. In addition to the physical challenges of reaching Chibok, there was also the problem of poor cell phone coverage. This meant getting information out of Chibok was an ordeal, and by extension, it made it difficult to counter the narrative of “nothing happened here” when it sprung up in the early days of the abduction.

  Meanwhile, the lack of visibility for the missing girls’ parents also factored into how everything played out. The president’s supporters routinely argued that the absence of TV and newspaper images featuring distraught Chibok parents was yet more proof that no girls had been taken. The truth was that the majority of the missing girls were from families so poor, they simply couldn’t afford to travel to places like Lagos and Abuja, where, at least for a time, hordes of journalists were eagerly waiting to hear their stories of what had happened on that hot night in April. These heartbroken parents were held back by not only their inability to afford the hefty transportation costs, but perhaps just as much by their limited education. Chibok isn’t some media-savvy community whose locals would grasp the critical importance of getting the stories of their missing daughters out to Nigeria and the wider world. As a result, there was a gap created by their lack of visibility and silence. Unfortunately, many inside and outside the government would step up to fill it with spin.

  Finally, if you look closely enough, you’ll also spot something else at play, buried deep in the hoax narrative that took hold of so many: Nigerian society’s implicit bias against its poor. Even before the Chibok girls disappeared from their communities, they had been rendered invisible by their poverty in Nigeria’s class-conscious society. Their status informed the government’s response at the most fundamental level, long before the religious, regional, and political tensions set in. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Nigeria who could honestly say that the disappearance of hundreds of schoolgirls from wealthy Nigerian families would have been met with the muted yet taciturn response from the Jonathan government. Instead, we’d have most likely witnessed a marshaling of the full assets of the state. Similarly, attempts to establish a hoax narrative would have been challenged at every turn by educated parents and loved ones, who would have then flooded the media and eliminated the government’s ability to use their daughters as pawns in the long-running political battle between Nigeria’s north and south.

  The truth is, had the Chibok girls been rich, they would have been seen as more valuable, their parents’ stories would have been listened to more attentively, and the Chibok community’s anguish would have been felt more collectively by their country. Quite simply, the girls would have mattered to many more people.

  Chapter Ten

  FOR ALL THE NIGERIANS WHO DISMISSED THE REPORTS OF THE Chibok girls being abducted from their school in the middle of the night and turned away from their brokenhearted parents, there were many others, also in Nigeria, who quickly recognized that a grave injustice had occurred.

  To people like Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, the country’s former minister of education, onetime vice-president of the World Bank for Africa, and Nigerian presidential candidate, what happened in Chibok was a painful wrong and the Nigerian government bore the responsibility to make things right. The girls’ disappearance shocked Oby to her core, and on April 23, 2014, nine days after the girls were taken, a sense of duty compelled this mother of three sons to seize the moment when she addressed an audience gathered to honor UNESCO’s selection of the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt as the World Book Capital.

  Tall and imposing, Oby possessed a deep voice, which was thick with emotion, and her piercing eyes flashed with intensity as she called on everyone present to take a stand “and make a collective demand for our daughters to be released, for our daughters to be rescued. Join us in declaring that Port Harcourt as the book capital of the world makes a collective demand for the rescue of our schoolgirls . . . So today, we call together, bring back all our daughters.” Her words struck a chord with the event’s organizer, who underscored Oby’s plea. “We take it home, bring back our daughters.”

  The impassioned remarks also struck Ibrahim M. Abdullahi, a
Nigerian corporate lawyer who watched Oby’s speech on TV from Port Harcourt and immediately posted a message on Twitter amplifying her call to action: “Yes #BringBackOurDaughters #BringBackOurGirls declared by @obyezeks and all people at Port Harcourt World Book Capital 2014.” This was the very first use of the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Once Oby retweeted Abdullahi’s message a few hours later and then followed up with her own—“Lend your Voice to the Cause of our Girls. Please All, use the hashtag to keep the momentum UNTIL they are RESCUED”—the hashtag was turbocharged. According to the now-shuttered social media analytics firm Topsy, close to eight thousand tweets used that hashtag by the end of that same day, ostensibly making it the official rallying cry for those campaigning on behalf of the missing girls. The next day saw the number of tweets almost double to 14,700. By the following week, the hashtag was being used thousands of times a day.

  It’s worth noting that much of the online traffic around the hashtag was centered in Nigeria, driven by concerned citizens who were demanding answers and action from the government of President Jonathan, an administration that alternated between giving false information and saying nothing at all. As the days went by, Oby grew increasingly frustrated by the president’s refusal to engage with the grieving families or to publicly address the issue of the missing girls. So in this patriarchal society prone to minimizing female agency, four women—Oby, the activist and politician; Hadiza Bala Usman, a lawyer and child rights advocate; Dr. Maryam Uwais; and the women’s rights activist Saudatu Mahdi—united and called for “a million-woman march” to the national assembly on April 30 using the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag to promote it. All protestors were asked to wear red in a show of solidarity, the color chosen to signify the danger the missing girls faced and the passionate love felt by all advocating for their release.

  Aisha Yesufu was an unknown Nigerian citizen when the girls first disappeared. This fortysomething Muslim woman had been busy running her successful real estate business and caring for her husband and two teenagers when the news of the abductions emerged. The few details she heard affected her deeply, and she couldn’t shake her feelings of upset. Despair turned to short-lived joy when the Nigerian military initially announced that all but eight of the girls had been rescued. That joy quickly became bitter disappointment, though, when it emerged that the statement had been a lie.

  At the gym one day, a friend told Aisha about a planned April 30 protest.

  “I’ll be there!” she’d replied, without even pausing to think about it. Immediately, she turned to finding a red hijab to replace the dark one she wore every day in public.

  At the time of the abductions, her twelve-year-old daughter, Aliyyah, attended one of Abuja’s most elite private schools, where she rubbed shoulders with the children of the rich and powerful, a Nigerian who’s who. Meanwhile, her son, Amir, attended a private boarding school in England. Married to an accountant and with business success of her own, Aisha considered her life to be good. But it hadn’t always been that way.

  Aisha had grown up in staggering poverty, so deprived she often went to school without breakfast and came home without having any lunch. She always understood how poverty in a place like Nigeria casts people as faceless, nameless, and voiceless. If she’d have fallen victim to the same misfortune that swept away the Chibok girls, she knew that no one would have spoken up for her, no one would have listened to her poor parents. Her personal history triggered an enormous sense of responsibility to fight for the Chibok girls, because it was clear their own government wanted to see the story squashed.

  On the day of the planned march, April 30, a crowd of a few hundred gathered at Abuja’s Unity Fountain. The skies were dark and angry, threatening to open and deliver rain at a moment’s notice. Draped from head to toe in her new scarlet-red hijab, Aisha was an unforgettable sight among the masses of men and women, all wearing a collection of red skirts, blouses, dresses, and trousers. An assortment of hand-written signs spoke for some of the protestors.

  WHERE ARE MY SISTERS?

  PLEASE PROTECT US.

  RESCUE OUR CHIBOK GIRLS

  THE GIRLS DON’T DESERVE THIS.

  These demands, scribbled on large pieces of white paper and carried by a relatively small number of people, spoke to the deep-seated frustrations felt toward the government by millions across the country. When the time arrived for the marchers to set off for the National Assembly, big, fat droplets began to fall. Groans rose up from the protestors. Some shuddered. The will to continue with the march began to falter.

  Oby, the former minister of education and person who initially called on the Nigerian government to “bring back our daughters,” stepped forward as the rain fell harder, her closely cropped hair glistening in the downpour.

  “Are we going to melt if the rain touches us?” She was defiant, glaring through her narrow glasses. “Do we know what our daughters are going through? Is it the rain that will stop us?”

  For a moment the crowd was silent. But then it roared back to life, shouting, “No!”

  The rain now came down fast and heavy, while dark storm clouds did their best to snuff out the day’s light. A contingent of police officers, on hand to provide protection, accompanied the protestors as they began their slow walk to the federal building. As they walked, they chanted: “All we are saying is, ‘Bring Back Our Girls’!”

  Aisha walked in her red hijab with thoughts of her daughter on her mind. She knew that if her child’s school were ever attacked, she wouldn’t need to be out beating a path through a gloomy Abuja, because the entire machinery of the state would be deployed to find children with famous last names. The steps Aisha took along Abuja’s wide streets weren’t primarily for her own twelve-year-old, they were just as much for the poor, hungry, gap-toothed little girl she herself had once been, invisible to almost everyone, and constantly at risk of permanently fading away on the margins of society.

  The whole time they walked, Hadiza Bala Usman, the lawyer and child rights advocate who’d been one of the four to organize the march, cautiously hoped that a tentatively promised meeting between the protestors and the Nigerian president might, in fact, become a reality. By the time they arrived at the National Assembly, though, every one of the marchers was drenched, and Goodluck Jonathan was nowhere to be found. The marchers met with the Senate president and the Speaker of the House, both of whom promised to seek out more information about what the government was actually doing to find the girls. The crowd listened patiently and respectfully, but Oby made sure the politicians understood they were on a deadline.

  “We will come back. We are giving twenty-four hours. Tomorrow we will gather here at the same time, three p.m., if there is no clear message as to the effect that our daughters have been found,” she said.

  On Twitter, meanwhile, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign gained a significant breakthrough that same day: more than 100,000 tweets with the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag were posted.

  There are two likely reasons for this increase. One, false news reports emerged that day, courtesy of the missing girls’ families and local villagers, that some of the schoolgirls had been sold off as child brides for a sum of approximately twelve dollars each, which enraged people, particularly in Nigeria. And two, a host of celebrities began using the hashtag, including the American R&B singers Chris Brown and Mary J. Blige, the British journalist Piers Morgan, and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani advocate for girls’ education and a former target of the Taliban. Their advocacy brought the movement to a global level of heightened attention.

  Back in Abuja, the protestors returned to Unity Fountain once the demonstration at the National Assembly was over. Aisha watched openmouthed as a member of the Chibok Parents’ Association fell to his knees in the fading light and pleaded with all of those assembled. “Please don’t abandon us with this issue. If you do, the government will forget about us and we just do not have the strength of voice to be heard.”

  No one knew what to say initially. But the
n different voices weighed in.

  “Are we going to wait for the Senate to come back to us? Or are we going to keep coming back every day?” someone asked.

  “We’re going to keep coming back!” a chorus shouted.

  “But wait!” cautioned Oby. “Let me remind you of what coming back every day means.” She spoke slowly and seriously. “It means no matter how long it takes.”

  A unanimous “Yes” rang out.

  For Aisha Yesufu, it seemed the time had come to finally stand up and use the voice she had fought so hard to gain. Still, she didn’t really know what she’d agreed to beneath the trees at the Unity Fountain. Like the others gathered, she had no idea how long the kidnapping might take to resolve.

  By May 7, a little more than a week since the march, the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag had been tweeted a total of one million times. Shortly afterward, then–first lady Michelle Obama added her voice with her own tweet. She also shared during her husband’s weekly radio address that she was “outraged and heartbroken” by the crime in Nigeria. The list of celebrities throwing their weight behind the movement grew. Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Sean Combs, Kim Kardashian, Ellen DeGeneres, Justin Timberlake, Jamie Foxx, Salma Hayek, and Ricky Martin all went online to show their support for #BringBackOurGirls.

  Not everyone welcomed the surge in hashtag activism, though. Some critics labeled it self-serving and questioned what it would ultimately achieve.

  But Aisha Yesufu was pleased with the attention. The social media community that formed around the Chibok girls made it impossible for the Nigerian government to ignore a truth she held near to her heart. These girls were valuable. They were missed and they mattered.