The Chibok abduction in Borno State, North-East Nigeria was not just a national tragedy with international dimension, it also had deep political implications which again exposed Nigeria’s fragility as a nation.
It was under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, a period in Nigeria’s history when terrorism attained existential proportions, challenging the monopoly of the use of state power for political stability, and badly weakening his presidency.
The early signs began with the Independence Day bombing of the Eagle Square in 2010 while Jonathan was seeking his first run for the presidency,
Later, on June 16, 2011, shortly after Jonathan’s election win and inauguration for a first full term as President, the Police Force headquarters in Abuja, supposedly a well secured facility, was struck by a suicide bomber, leaving two persons dead.
Two months later, on August 27, the UN House in Abuja was hit by a huge car bomb, killing 18 persons. On Christmas Day of the same year, the Catholic Church in Madalla near Nigeria’s capital city was bombed, and 37 worshippers killed
Several other killings happened in the years that followed, and were reported as regular terrorist activities. But it was the Chibok abduction that got the Boko Haram terrorist organisation the global attention it craved for, propping their identity to international reckoning.
Their victims were vulnerable young girls, and their fate in the hands of known killers was quite inconceivable for many. It turned out to be the single major undermining factor in the Jonathan administration.
So while the economy gained under him, insecurity deteriorated significantly, damaging both his national and international political reputation. But for Nigeria’s political class especially the opposition, Chibok became a rallying weapon to oust the Jonathan regime for its failings.
The newly formed political coalition, the All Progressives Congress, APC made huge political capital out of it. Ahead of the 2015 presidential election, candidate Muhammadu Buhari campaigned with a promise to ensure all the captive girls were released, promising in his words “to lead from the front”.
But by the time he took over, his promises became his albatross as the Bring Back Our Girls Group, BBOG campaigners took him to task. The group at some point were perceived as an irritant by the Buhari presidency, and their protests in Abuja suffered repeated police disruptions.
But Buhari managed to have 126 of the captive girls released. In 2018 however, on the eve of his administration’s bid for a second term, another Chibok-like incident occurred. This time, 110 girls from Government Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State were abducted by an ISIS affiliated group. Five died, others were later returned but one, Leah Sharibu, a Christian girl, was held and has been in captivity since then. Buhari never fulfilled his promise to ensure she is freed like the others.
With 82 Chibok girls still in captivity, the demand for their rescue is now President Bola Tinubu’s burden. Like Buhari, he too took the Jonathan government to task, and supported the BBOG campaigners for the release of the abducted girls.
Incidentally, his administration much like his predecessors, has also faced similar Chibok abductions with less than a year into office.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
