It seems that that the #bringbackourgirls protest has finally died down. It so looks as if people are tired of carrying placards and protesting to bring back our girls. Even the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups seemed to have almost abandoned the fight.
What could be the cause of the abandonment? Is it the passage of time? Has time finally taken its toll on people’s minds that they have suddenly forgotten an important issue like this?
Agreed it is over four months these school girls were kidnapped from their dormitories at Chibok, Borno State, but does that mean we should stop clamouring for their release? Have we allowed other matters like the Ebola crisis and the increased nefarious activities of the Boko Haram to overshadow our desire to bring them back? Initially, there were lots of protests, clamouring from almost every quarter both within and outside the country to bring the girls back ‘intact’ and these protests were appreciated, but recently, all efforts towards this direction seem to have simmered.
The Federal Government keeps making vain promises that the girls will be brought back but we have not seen anything up till now. Even the help rendered by some foreign powers have not yielded any fruit.
The singular fact that all the efforts made to bring the girls back had not yielded any fruit had created a lethargic effect on people’s zeal to continue to clamour for the release of these girls.
The question then is, should we forget them? Should we just finally lay to rest the call for their release? What about if they are directly related to us, would we abandon the search for them, would we allow time and lack of results to eclipse their memory and stop us from continuing the quest for their release?
There is one adage that says that we liken a corpse that is not related to us as log of wood. Is this how we feel about the whole thing? Why not try to put ourselves in the shoes of the relations of these girls? How would you feel if your teenage daughter or sister is at the mercy of a known terrorist who does not have any regard for human life?
If it is death, we forget with time, yes, even the pain of the death of a loved one goes away in the cause of time, but the hope that they might still be alive should spur us on not forget the clamour for their release but persevere until they come back.
Let us realise that what happened to these girls could happen to every other girl. It could be your daughter, sister or relative. How would you feel if people stop lending their voices for their release?
In like manner, the bad state of the roads in Apapa and Tin can seems to have been forgotten as a result of the break in rainfall. Until there is another rain, and the roads become impassable before the authorities in charge start running head over heels to do some make shift adjustments.
Well, the solace is that in Nigeria we pray for one big negative incident to happen so that the ones making headlines already can be forgotten or get less attention. It is a PR strategy! Pray! Pray!! Pray for eclipse of stories or headlines
