On Saturday, May 3, I attended the BringBackOurGirls campaign rally in Toronto at Dundas Square, with other protestors seeking to bring attention to the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. Because my city is a melting pot of many different cultures, some of the attendees were born and raised in Nigeria and had an intimate knowledge of the social struggles young girls are facing there. Hearing them speak was eye-opening because it revealed that the entire situation is far more layered and complex than I previously thought.
This is not simply about 276 young women who’ve been abducted by some crazy Islamic fundamentalists. There are some deep-seeded roadblocks to safety from the poorest communities to the highest office in that land. After researching Nigeria, I’ve come to realize the big problem with the #BringOurGirlsBack campaign: There’s no system in place to protect young girls in Nigeria.
We all want to see these schoolgirls return to their families unhurt and not raped, but I think it’s also a given that we want them to live free and safe without the possibility of retributive attacks or re-enslavement. However, everything I’ve seen from Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife Patience Jonathan is ambivalence and annoyance at this entire scenario. The abducted girls are Black, but this is not a simple race issue as some of us believe. There is something far more insidious occurring. There’s classism, politics, and high-level corruption at play here.
These 276 students deserve to be returned unscathed. But there are many other girls who have been abducted who deserve a similar humanitarian effort. How many you ask? Well in the past three decades, the number of kidnappings in Nigeria has gone from two in 1983 to 3,608 in 2013. There were 2,285 kidnappings in Nigeria just in the first four months of 2014, according to GDELT. Even scarier, on April 15 when the schoolgirls were abducted, there were 151 other kidnappings on that day. And 215 the next.
[Chart: FiveThirtyEight]
Clearly, there’s a huge problem in Nigeria with kidnappings and terrorist occupation from the Boko Haram. Surely, the Nigerian government would be anxious to work with its citizens to resolve this issue, right?! Well, here is how Patience Jonathan has reacted:
In a report on the meeting, Daily Trust newspaper quoted Patience Jonathan as ordering all Nigerian women to stop protesting, and warning that “should anything happen to them during protests, they should blame themselves.”
Jonathan has allegedly ordered that protest leaders be detained, while maintaining that many of the people drawing attention to this issue are really just attempting to undermine her husband’s time in office.
The tragedy of this situation really hit home after I heard Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the extremist terrorist group Boko Haram, state that he has the 300 girls who are now their slaves (read: sex slaves), and he is willing to sell them to be slave wives to “the market.” The abuses these young women are enduring mentally, physically, and emotionally are unimaginable, so it’s scary to think that the government is more invested in “appearing” concerned to the international audience, than protecting young women from poor families. Let’s be clear, the abducted girls did not come from the rich and ruling class in Nigeria, so the government has little motivation to find them and keep them protected. While it’s great that the international community is rallying to help find these schoolgirls, it won’t mean much if the Nigerian government isn’t actively interested in protecting its own citizens.
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.
[Image: ABCNews.com]