UN Special Envoy for Global Education, and former UK Prime Minister, who was in Nigeria this week shares his experience. Find the article he wrote about the Chibok girls below..
"I was shown these pictures after visiting Nigeria this week. I met the leader of the community council in Chibok, the town from which the girls were abducted.
Slowly and with tears in his eyes, he flicked through a file in which he had recorded the names and photographs of the girls. Continue...
Not even the police and Army have managed to compile such detail he has amassed from talking to the parents of the kidnapped teenagers.
The file has 185 pages — one for every girl. Each page has a photograph, and beside each passport-sized picture some stark facts — the girl’s name, her school grade and the date of abduction. For the other 19 abducted girls, he has yet to locate photographs. He will.
The community leader and the girls’ families have given permission for their names and photographs to be put into the public domain so the world is reminded of the missing girls. He is being helped to publicize this by Arise TV chief Nduka Obaigbena.
There is also a file on the 53 girls who escaped by running for their lives from their Boko Haram kidnappers.
I have spoken to three who fled. All want to be doctors and work as medical helpers in their communities. But for now, their lives are on hold.
They are unable to finish their exams, unable to find a safe place to study near home and are still in fear of another attack from Boko Haram. They have lost a year of their schooling and they are traumatised by the kidnapping of their friends.
For a teenage girl, eight weeks in captivity could have life-time consequences — and for their families it is torture. The idea that your daughter should go to school one day and never return is every parent’s nightmare. Not to know whether they have been molested, trafficked or are even alive is a living hell.
These girls were abducted for the sole reason that their captors believe that girls have no right to an education.
Yet this civil rights struggle is being fought out, brutally and — for most of the time — shamefully unobserved.
On
one side, terrorists, murderers, rapists and cowards, hell-bent on acts
of depravity. On the other, defiant, relentless,
brave-beyond-comprehension young girl-heroes and boy-heroes desperately
fighting for a future but, sadly, in a world largely oblivious to their
plight.
In
Britain and in the United States, we do find out. We do learn about
abuse and horror from across the globe and we do react. But it’s often
too late, and then, inevitably, it’s always too little. We should not
fail young people, but it seems like we always do.
But we can’t forget. We owe them. We can’t give up because they won’t have given up.
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Hmm. This is strange. These girls are just too old to be classified as teenagers. And they look much older, than they look in the video.
ReplyDeleteBoko kidnap future boko mothers
DeleteNa now una they bring out there picture, GOD go punish all of you...
ReplyDeleteI don't the publication of the photographs and names of the girls was necessary. This may even complicate issues for them. This is a very bad action.
ReplyDeleteMay God help us in this country
ReplyDeleteDon't mind our government, like I said and will keep on saying, nobody was abducted and all these pictures are family and relations of boko haram. Am too smart to be decived, BH are currently in stavation let alone feeding a hostage. Make urself an example and don't eat for a week let's see if u'll survive the 2nd week let alone a month plus
ReplyDeleteYou are nothing but a smartest fool
DeleteGod this girls are just too beautiful to be kidnapped by those uncircumcised dogs(BH). God Almighty pls come and save these girls. Since the government and foreign countries can not save them
ReplyDeleteyou should not make this look like frick, are you saying if not the british guy that came we dont surpose to see this pictures since then. i no want to talk again na una sabi.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder there was no protest from the northern state governors because those girls are not muslim, and these vilages is pre dominated by christians.
ReplyDelete