nigeria’s abducted girls: a democracy under siege

[sheshe2]

The world is slowly waking up to a 2 week old horror, the gut-wrenching story of 234+ teenage girls abducted by a band of terrorists from their boarding school just as they were in the midst of taking their High School Certification exams. A horror that was no less eased when it was reported that some of the traumatized girls who had managed to escape their captors, the Boko Haram, recently told grim news of their fellow captives being sold into “marriage” to terrorists within and without Nigeria’s Northern borders.



Within the 2 wks since the girls were kidnapped public anger inside Nigeria rose and spilled out into the streets in the last 24-48 hours in demonstrations against government impotence to grapple with the terrorist menace that its victims call Boko Haram, which means “Western education Forbidden” (See further below for more on history of Boko Haram). Social media relayed that anger to a wider global public under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Petition drives have accelerated to galvanize awareness and demand action, including one from Change.org currently gathering steam in the US.

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However the indignation captured in the hashtag bumps up against a very messy and complicated reality, one that lifts the scab off the virulent canker metastasizing in several 21st century fledgling democracies and in some mature ones as well, gashing open threadbare societies. Democracy itself is rendered naked. And so:

1) #BringBackOurGirls. But from where?

2) Who do we ask to #BringBackOurGirls?

3) And if we are able to identify captors, who, if anyone, are they answerable to?

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Read More: http://theobamadiary.com/2014/05/01/nigerias-abducted-girls-a-democracy-under-siege/

[sheshe2]

1. Kick

[Scruffy Rumbler]

2. K & R

May they be found!

[Cha]

3. Sad beyond words, she.. mahalo for

shining a light on it~

[sheshe2]

4. It is beyond belief Cha.

The abduction of the girls from Chibok in Northeastern Nigeria is just the latest Boko Haram orchestrated strike in what has become its 5 year repeated murderous assault on Nigerian citizens in schools, markets, churches, police stations, that has killed more than an estimated 4 thousand people. The day before the kidnapping, a bomb blast on a bus had killed estimated 70 people, Christmas Day massacres, Last year students were murdered in the sleep in dormitories at an Agricultural College in Bornu State. Another attack took place in Abuja the political capital. Despite the Islamist religious cloak that Boko Haram covers itself in, its victims have been Muslims and Christians alike.

http://theobamadiary.com/2014/05/01/nigerias-abducted-girls-a-democracy-under-siege/

ZiZi did some great in depth research on this!

[Cha]

5. Yes, zizi is a treasure on all things, African~