WHAT IF NO GIRLS WERE KIDNAPPED AT CHIBOK? BY FRANCIS O. NMERIBE

I do not expect this article to be popular with anybody.  I do not expect any accolades either.  But in security, perception is reality for the person involved.  Most Nigerians’ reality today is that 200 plus girls were kidnapped from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State some 77 days ago while in their boarding facility while preparing to write their West African Examination Council (WAEC) Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination.

As a person who lives by my analytical skill as a security practitioner, I have been following the whole saga and trying to read between the lines.  I am beginning to feel that there is strong probably no school girls were kidnapped in reality and that the whole issue has been a written piece of drama which the authors are set to keep updating to ensure there is no end as an end would expose the possibility that no one had been kidnapped.

If you have not gotten too angry to continue reading this piece, I would provide you with red flags which show that the equation does not fit together and therefore, grounds to question the story of kidnap of more than 200 girls from a school boarding facility at Chibok, Borno State.

One, so far, nobody has given an exact number of girls who were in the school that night and exactly how many were abducted and the exact number of girls who escaped before they were taken away.  Everything about the numbers have been conjectures of about 200, 274, 300 girls kidnapped or 20, 40, 60 girls had escaped.

Two, the principal of the school Mrs. Asabe Kwabura had given two different versions of how the kidnap incident happened.  In one account, “she said that she was in Maiduguri for a medical checkup and her daughter called her to tell her insurgents are attacking the school”.  In another account, Mrs. Kwabura “said that the insurgents had come to her in the guise of soldiers and told her that they need to move the girls to a safer location and she allowed them”.  Who did she call to confirm the need to move the girls?  Who did she call to tell what the “soldiers” had told her before permitting them to take the girls, should that be the true story?  If the school was not safe for the students, why and how come it was it safe for Mrs. Kwabura and her daughter that resides with her? Is it not interesting that such a begging muddle would be in place and we are ignoring it and playing into the hands of Boko Haram and all those in the same ship with them.

Three, when the first video of the “abducted girls” were shown, we were shown video of chubby happy Islamic girls who were reciting the Koran and Hadith perfectly “though they were just forcibly converted to Islam only a few weeks earlier”.  What magic did the busy Boko Haram fighters use in achieving such a feat impossible for even Albert Einstein?  If they can do that magic, we had better allow them to come and teach our children science and mathematics.

Four, on the first day when the parents of the “abducted Chibok girls” were asked to identify them from the video; the news report was that none of the girls were their daughters.  By the second day, the identification parade moved to the governor’s office and 4 girls were identified.  By the third, fourth, fifth days, we heard, 20 girls, 40 girls and 60 girls had been identified.  And that was the last we heard about identifying the girls.  What about the remaining two hundred and something if 274 or 300 girls had been abducted?

Five, a sixty year old woman was listed among those that were abducted.  Even if we assume that she is doing adult education, how come up to date, nobody has come forward to say that his or her sixty year old mother or sister or aunty was among those kidnapped if she were to be childless at that age which is possible.

Six, Mrs. Asabe Kwabura in one news report said that 43 of the girls had been accounted for and 230 are still missing.  But every day, the report in the media is that 274 girls are still missing.

Seven, some Northern leaders are already preparing us for the inevitable – the time when there would be no real girls to use in proving some girls were ever kidnapped.  Sani Shehu was quoted by the Nigerian press to say that “by the time the girls are released, they would not know themselves again and some of them may become militants”.  In the business of persuasion, that statement is tantamount to ‘preparation’ – getting us ready for the day that we could not have any girls who can vouch to being taken. Then it would be said, “They have been so confused, they cannot remember who they are anymore”. And also as soon as more female bombers join the boko haram terrorist group, it could be said that they must be the Chibok girls who have been indoctrinated.

Eight, Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the marauders of Nigeria that I distrust greatly joined forces with the North and said that “he is afraid that before long, all the Chibok girls would be impregnated by their captors”.  These are all preparations.

Nine, check it out – no single parent or parents or relations of the “Chibok girls” have come forward to discuss about their ordeal to the Nigerian press.  All that has been heard were from parents that spoke through governor Shettima of Borno State or other governor’s office officials.

My security background and instincts find it difficult to stay comfortable with these obvious conflicts and misleading statements preparing us to accept what next lie that could be sold about the Chibok school girls’ abduction.

Therefore, my imagination is running riots presently and if you have liberty to create so much embarrassment for the Nigerian nation and government, I am at liberty to imagine that the true situation is that we are being beguiled by a ruse calculated to embarrass the Nigerian government and people and also achieve sinister agenda clearly connected to the Boko Haram Agenda.  My grounds are adduced below.

One, it is not hidden anymore that the Boko Haram programme is an agenda planned and executed to bring home the threat made by no less than three eminent Northern politicians including Junaidu Mohammed, Atiku Abukakar, Muhammadu Buhari to mention but a few, that they would make Nigeria ungovernable for Jonathan if he wins the elections in 2011.  This threat has been repeated in several other ways and guises especially with the learning that President Jonathan might want to contest for a second term in 2015.

Two, when you listen to ‘Abubakar Shekau’ talk, the same statements he makes is the same that all Jonathan’s opponents are making.  After each terrorist bomb attack on the Nigerian soil and people, ‘Abubakar Shekau’ boasts how he is better than Jonathan.  He boasts that Nigerian security forces and the President are weak.  It is this same statement that the opposition and most northern elite use.  Even the failed governors’ of the North-East talk in exactly the same language and term of how Boko Haram fighters are better than the Nigerian soldiers just with the same words ‘Abukakar Shekau’ would use when boasting about his successes.

Three, since the 1950s, the United States of America have always wanted to have a military base in Nigeria.  So far, this has failed through the efforts of Nigerian students in the 1950s and 1960s and the military leaders of Nigeria and current leaders to resist the chocolate coated sword from America. An embarrassment like the kidnap of so many girls and apparent failure of Nigerian soldiers to rescue the phantom girls is enough to announce shame on a leadership and force their hands to accept help of American troops.

Four, a year or two ago, the U.S. Intelligence predicted that Nigeria would disintegrate in 2015.  Is there a chance that all that is in motion is an operation to actualize that prediction?

My counsel to the Northern peoples of Nigeria – this country is better than anything else.  If you do not live and let live, you would lose the oil money that has served you so well in the past.

To America, my counsel is that it is a wiser step to support and help Nigeria to stand in an equitable manner.  If Nigeria disintegrates, there would be no space in America regardless of you’re the efficiency of your immigration security officials and apparatus.

My one counsel for President Goodluck Jonathan, and he needs to do this before his luck runs out.  “President Jonathan should realize that we have a civil war on our hands with boko haram being the armed forces of the rebel North.  He should put on the cap of a President at war and go ahead and prosecute the war against boko haram as a war”.

Good luck to all.