by Isha Sesay
As she took her daily position at the Unity Fountain for the Bring Back Our Girls sit-in, she saw the number of attendees ebb and flow. There were days when barely a dozen people turned up, but Aisha was always there, and at some point her thoughts always drifted to her own children, in particular to her daughter, Aliyyah. Aisha marveled at how her daughter’s young life had changed in the years since the Bring Back Our Girls protests had taken over her existence. Aliyyah was moving forward in school, having new experiences, and nurturing new dreams. But there were no stories of progress for the stolen girls—their lives had been truncated, and their parents’ existence hollowed out. Invariably, Aisha’s mind also wandered back to the very beginning, that rain-soaked night at the Unity Fountain when parents of the missing Chibok community members and people like herself who had refused to accept this injustice had all said a defiant yes, to launching daily Bring Back Our Girls demonstrations. But never in a million years had Aisha expected them to still be sitting in the same place all these years later, or for the parents of the missing girls to have been abandoned first by the government of Goodluck Jonathan and then that of his successor, Muhammadu Buhari. Aisha absorbed all the parents’ pain, and their lamentations never left her.
“Every time I hear someone say it is a scam,” cried one Chibok mother, “I ask myself, Does that mean my eighteen-year-old daughter never existed? Because I had a daughter who was eighteen, whom I sent to school, and she never came back to me.”
“The government used to fine us for not sending our children to school. But now we have sent our children to school and they have been taken away—who is going to fine the government?” said another father mournfully.
“My daughter always said she was going to university so she could come back and look after me. Is it with the terrorists she is now looking after me?” a different mother mourned.
Under President Jonathan, the government’s response to the Chibok abductions was one of indifference and denial. The president decided early on that events in Chibok were a hoax, one devised to embarrass and ultimately drive him from office, so his administration was never a source of comfort for the devastated parents and community. In fact, on April 15, 2014, the day after news of the girls’ abduction broke, President Jonathan had been seen out in public, happily singing and dancing at a political rally in the northern state of Kano. He said nothing publicly about the girls for nineteen days, till a question about the events in Chibok was posed to him on May 4 during a routine television appearance.
At the same time, First Lady Patience Jonathan had done her part to sow discord into the public debate surrounding the missing girls. On May 5, during an all-night meeting with some mothers of the missing girls and their supporters, Patience had lashed out at the heartbroken women. “We, the Nigerian women, are saying that no child is missing in Borno State. If any child is missing, let the governor go and look for them. There is nothing we can do again.” Hours after the meeting had ended two attendees, Naomi Mutuah and Saratu Angus Ndirpaya, representatives of the Chibok community who’d organized a series of protests against the Nigerian’s government’s response to the abduction, were detained by Nigerian state security officials and driven to a police station, reportedly on the orders of Patience Jonathan. Saratu later described to journalists and a number of Chibok community elders the full-blown anger directed toward her and Naomi by the first lady, who told them in the middle of the crowded room that “they had no right to protest,” because they didn’t have children among the missing girls. The first lady’s media assistant later disputed the multiple public accounts of Patience’s involvement in the arrest of these two Bring Back Our Girls activists.
The whole time Aisha looked on, and her shock slowly turned to angry disbelief as the first couple opened up a divide in Nigerian society. She made no secret of her objections. “That is one of the most horrendous things the government of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan did, to make people doubt there was an abduction. Instead of trying to get everyone to come together, he ended up separating people.” On May 26, 2014, forty-three days after the girls disappeared, the chief of defense staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, proudly announced in front of a bank of TV cameras, “The good news for the parents of the girls is that we know where they are but we cannot tell you. We cannot come and tell you the military’s secret. Just leave us alone to do our work. We are going to get the girls back.” The world waited. No girls returned. Bring Back Our Girls refused to back down and continued to ask questions and demand details of the government’s efforts to free the captives. The answers never came, and the state’s position on negotiating with Boko Haram and accepting offers of international assistance to rescue the girls remained unclear. But one thing wasn’t in doubt: the Jonathan administration’s position that the Bring Back Our Girls movement, including Oby, Aisha, and the rest of the protestors, was without exception the enemy.
Seemingly overnight Aisha found herself the target of online intimidation from Internet trolls who claimed the Bring Back Our Girls movement was in cahoots with the opposition and working to derail President Jonathan’s reelection chances. The online abuse Aisha and the other activists experienced was near constant, and on more than one occasion that online intimidation crossed over into the real world. Ugly scenes of pushing and shoving between Bring Back Our Girls activists and thugs for hire played out at the Unity Fountain.
For Muhammadu Buhari, President Jonathan’s main political challenger in the 2015 elections, the abducted girls were the perfect campaign issue to drive a wedge between Jonathan and voters. It was a foolproof narrative gifted to the opposition. Goodluck Jonathan lost 219 girls on his watch, from a part of the country under a state of emergency. He is weak and can’t be trusted to keep the nation safe, and he certainly doesn’t care about the poor and those living in the Muslim north. Everywhere Buhari went, every time he opened his mouth, Aisha heard “Chibok girls this, Chibok girls that, Chibok girls, I’m going to bring them back.” Sure enough, the seventy-two-year-old former military ruler rode to victory months later with a pledge to defeat Boko Haram, making him the first opposition figure to win a presidential election in Nigeria since its independence in 1960. On May 29, 2015, Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as the fifteenth president of Nigeria in Abuja’s Eagle Square. This latest chapter in the nation’s long, turbulent history was marked by celebratory dancing, doves released to symbolize peace, and a declaration from the new president: “We cannot claim to have defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls and all other innocent persons held hostage by insurgents.” He added, “This government will do all it can to rescue them alive.”
Aisha watched these scenes on her TV screen like millions of other Nigerians, and her heart leapt in her chest. Finally the Bring Back Our Girls movement had a president who acknowledged freely and openly that the Chibok mass abduction had happened and, unlike Goodluck Jonathan, was committed to ending this long-running nightmare for the girls’ parents. When the new president met with Aisha, some of the other BBOG activists, and two Chibok parents a couple of weeks later, on July 18, 2015, her heart swelled with joy as she watched Buhari take notes, provide words of comfort to the grieving parents, and once again reiterate his commitment to rescuing the girls. As far as Aisha was concerned it was an amazing meeting and she left on an incredible high.
But then President Buhari declared on December 24, 2015, that despite continued suicide bombings by Boko Haram, the Nigerian military had “technically . . . won the war” against the insurgent group, BBOG activists were taken aback. During his inaugural address, Buhari’s definition of victory over Boko Haram had included the return of the Chibok girls. What had changed?
When news emerged of President Buhari’s first presidential media chat on December 30, 2015, Aisha saw it as an opportunity to finally get an update on efforts to find the girls. The activists all gathered around their television sets and waited as the president fielded questions from a panel of journalists during the live telev
ised event in Abuja. Finally the questions moved on to the Chibok girls and Boko Haram:
Question: “Do we know for a fact that the Chibok girls are alive, they are okay, and they are in this location, that location, or wherever it is they are—do we have any credible information?”
Buhari: “Not credible information. I am working with Niger, with Chad, and with Cameroon, and I assure you the question of the Chibok girls is in all our minds for even humanitarian reasons.
“But there is no firm intelligence where those girls physically are and what condition they are in. But what we believe from our intelligence they keep shifting them around so they are not taken by surprise and they get freed and they are not kept with a whole lot of . . . they are not kept in one place, we don’t know how many divisions they made of them and where they are.”
Question: “So in essence you don’t have any cogent intelligence, any credible intelligence to say the Chibok girls are still alive?”
Buhari: “Or whether they are in one place . . . that’s right and that’s the honest truth.”
Aisha felt sick to her stomach. Surely the president couldn’t have meant what he just said. Buhari was the one they’d been pinning their hopes on. He’d pledged to “fight” for the girls. There was no success against Boko Haram without the girls, those were his words. The president’s statement about a lack of “credible” intelligence brought to mind vague statements made in the past by officials in the previous administration. Bring Back Our Girls was infuriated by his casual-sounding statements and what came across as a distinct lack of urgency for any efforts to find the girls. It sent shockwaves throughout the entire movement. BBOG’s cofounder Oby Ezekwesili made clear Buhari’s position was unacceptable. “President Buhari is a very serious-minded person. For him to now say [there is a] lack of credible intelligence, that was totally not going to work. If there is a lack of credible intelligence, then get it—get the credible intelligence, find it, discover it, do everything to get it.”
BBOG demanded a meeting with President Buhari, and within days the date was set, for January 14, 2016. Word of the meeting got back to Chibok, and over 130 parents expressed their desire to attend. Many were forced to sell their cattle to afford the cost of traveling down to Abuja. They departed Chibok on January 13 and were promptly arrested by the local military for the baffling reason of failing to secure clearance to leave the area. Aisha could make no sense of the military’s actions. After a great deal of wrangling they were finally released, and by the time the parents caught up with the rest of the BBOG activists, Aisha and the others were standing at the gates of the presidential villa waiting to be shown in for their scheduled meeting with President Buhari. Attempts made by government officials to cancel the meeting and to send the parents and activists back were loudly rejected.
Eventually the presidential spokesman Garba Shehu relented and led the large group into a banquet hall. Already present was a high-level delegation of ministers, including the heads of women’s affairs, defense, the national security adviser, and the chief of defense staff. Aisha and the others quickly took a seat in the chairs provided and waited. The mood in the room was tense as both delegations eyed each other suspiciously. Before long one of the ministers spoke up.
“We’ve been sent by the president to meet with you,” he said.
“We’ve come to meet with the president. We have with us more than 130 Chibok parents who made the long journey to meet with the president,” replied the BBOG activists.
“The president is in a meeting.”
“That’s okay, we’ll wait. No matter how long it takes.”
And with that note of defiance the BBOG activists and Chibok parents settled in—all of which angered the minister of women’s affairs, Aisha al-Hassan, who openly berated the parents, calling them “ungrateful” for all that the Buhari government had done for them.
Aisha Yesufu took deep breaths and tried to stay calm.
Al-Hassan continued: “You should now stop with this protesting and leave this issue of your missing children in God’s hands.”
The parents looked startled and barely knew where to look once the words had left the minister’s mouth. Aisha Yesufu felt her head snap as she turned to glare at the minister. “You lost an election but took your case to court. Why didn’t you leave it to God?” She was seething as she spoke. The two women glared at one another before an aide coaxed the minister to step away from Aisha, who was ready for whatever came next.
They had been waiting over an hour when an official suddenly announced that the president would see them. A sense of relief spread out among the parents and the BBOG activists. Aisha sat up, eager for the opportunity to face President Buhari. After all, in the last meeting they’d had with him the previous year after his inauguration, he’d spoken with such warmth and kindness to the parents and activists. Aisha waited, and when the president entered the room, she did not recognize him. Buhari arrived in a clear state of anger and immediately the assembled media was ordered out of the room. The president glared at the parents and activists with open hostility. As Aisha’s shock subsided, she felt pain rise up to take its place. She couldn’t believe what was happening. After much cajoling the president grudgingly agreed to hear from a Chibok parent, a representative from BBOG, and a member of the Chibok community association. He listened impassively to stories of family heartache, a community struggling to move forward in the absence of its children, and BBOG’s request for the government to make the search for the girls a priority once more.
By the time he spoke, the president was so angry Aisha had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t in a bad dream. Looking over at the Chibok parents, Buhari practically spat out his words. “This administration has done a great deal for you and yet you are not appreciative. There is so much I have done for this country. There is so much corruption here and I have recovered those monies. . . .”
Aisha couldn’t understand why he was talking about corruption to Chibok parents, and then he shifted to the Niger delta. What has any of this got to do with these poor people? Aisha tried her best to hide her shock and pain, while the parents looked like their souls had been taken from them. They sat wide eyed and too afraid to move as the president dismissed their plight and the anguish they had battled for almost eighteen months.
Buhari continued to speak. “I have reached the peak of my career as a military man and as a politician.” With that he stood up, opened up his hand, and let the microphone drop to the table with a thud. And then he was gone.
The parents and the BBOG representatives were bewildered by what had just happened. Aisha rejected presidential protocols and remained seated, while the rest of the room scrambled to its feet when it dawned on everyone the president was abruptly leaving.
The Chibok parents had arrived with so much hope for this meeting, buoyed by everything Buhari had said on the campaign trail. Now they looked spent and utterly devastated. They hadn’t received a single kind word or expression of commitment to finding their daughters. Nothing.
On April 14, 2016, a line was drawn in the sand between the Bring Back Our Girls movement and the Buhari presidency. This was the moment Buhari cast BBOG as the enemy of the government. And for Aisha, it was the day she told herself Muhammadu Buhari ceased to be my president.
Chapter Seventeen
THE ABDUCTION OF THE 276 GIRLS FROM CHIBOK WAS A TRAGEDY, one that engulfed the lives of the girls, their families, and their community. But beyond the event’s tragic consequences, this is also a story about voices being ignored and silenced.
Boko Haram’s unbending opposition to girls’ education is, in essence, an expression of its desire to silence them. To deny females a voice is to take away their ability to challenge the very practices and norms that subjugate and harm them. Successive Nigerian governments shaped a response to this tragedy that included minimizing and ignoring the voices of those fighting for the girls’ return. And with the international media attaching so littl
e importance to the voices of Africans, news bosses easily moved on and global audiences tuned out.
All of this has driven me to use my own voice to keep this story on people’s minds. I also understand that the only reason I’m able to take this stance and speak up is because I’ve been empowered by education, and that I was born to an educated mother.
I don’t need data to make the case that education is one of life’s greatest differentiators. I have to look no further than my own mother’s life to see how it alters life’s outcomes. One educated girl can change everything.
My mother grew up in the small, underdeveloped Sierra Leonean town of Rotifunk with two brothers, a sister, her father with his two wives, and half siblings of all ages. They were a family of meager means, strong Islamic faith, and myriad rivalries and petty jealousies between the wives—my grandmother, Mammy Iye, and the older, first wife, Mammy Yenkin. The battles between these two women spanned my mother’s childhood. Mammy Yenkin constantly tried to push Mammy Iye and her children to the margins of my grandfather’s affections in order to gain favor for her own children. And while my grandfather Pa Amadou Conteh may have been open to manipulation in certain areas, he stood firm on the issue of his children going to school. Even though neither he nor his wives were educated, he made sure that when every single one of his nine children came of age, they were enrolled in the local primary school. They were all given the same opportunities. But one by one, my mother watched as her siblings fell behind or lost interest in their studies, and then dropped out of school altogether. In contrast, my mother, Kadi, was a devoted and gifted scholar who soared academically.