Hundreds of parents in Nigeria, many dressed in red, held a day of desperate protest on Thursday in the town where the kidnapping of scores of schoolgirls by Islamists has left families lurching from fury to despair.
The parents began their march outside the residence of a local chief in Chibok, the town in Borno state where suspected Boko Haram insurgents stormed into a school and abducted the girls at gunpoint over a fortnight ago.
The mothers and fathers – some wailing, some chanting angrily – marched towards the scene of the kidnapping, carrying placards reading “Find Our Daughters”, before holding a prayer ceremony at the school gates.
“We want our daughters back. We want the United Nations to come and assist in rescuing our daughters. Through this march, we want to tell the whole world that we need their help to secure the release of our daughters,” Enoch Mark, whose daughter and two nieces were abducted, told AFP.
Fidelis Olubukola, a member of the Civil Society, Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre, chants slogans for the release of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram during a workers’ rally in Lagos on May 1 2014. (Pic: AFP)
One father drew a damning parallel with recent international efforts to find the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
“Imagine 25 countries joining hands in a search for a missing aircraft in Malaysia whose passengers are presumed dead. Here we are talking of scores of living girls abducted by people known to have no mercy, but the government doesn’t seem to care much,” said a tearful Yakubu Maina.
The Borno government says 129 girls were taken and that 52 have since escaped.
But locals, including the principal at the targeted Government Girls Secondary School, say 230 students were taken and 187 are still missing.
The leader of Chibok’s elders forum, Pogu Bitrus, told AFP he had received information that the girls were trafficked into neighbouring Cameroon and Chad and sold as brides to insurgents for 2 000 naira ($12).
The report has not been confirmed.
“Death is preferable to this life of misery we have been living since their abduction,” said one mother at the protest, without giving his name. “We call on our government to sit up and rescue our girls.”
Criticism of government Anger at the government’s ineffectual response has fuelled protests across the country.
Police fired teargas to disperse a group of protesters on Thursday in central Lagos, local media reported, a day after hundreds rallied in the capital Abuja.
Speaking at a separate May Day rally in Abuja, the head of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Abdulwahed Omar, said: “Our hearts bleed and we pray for their safe release.
“The war on terrorism does not seem to be going well at the moment. We demand better initiatives and more commitment,” he told a crowd that included President Goodluck Jonathan, who has faced harsh criticism over the government’s response.
The mass kidnapping is one of the most shocking attacks in Boko Haram’s five-year extremist uprising, which has killed thousands across the north and centre of the country, including 1,500 people this year alone.
A delegation from the Senate in Abuja met with Jonathan on Wednesday to discuss the rescue operation, Senate spokesman Eyinnaya Abaribe told AFP on Thursday, but he declined to give details.
As a 10-year-old, Ayu, who lives in the rural Oromia region, wanted to complete her education and become a teacher instead of getting married young. But at the age of 14 she underwent FGM and by 16 she had left school and got married.
Ayu’s mother explained that the cutting was done at Ayu’s request. “After she heard a girl insulting another who was not circumcised, my daughter came home and asked me to organise her circumcision. She told me she does not want to be insulted in the same way.” And while her mother thought Ayu was not ready for marriage at 16 she was much more concerned about the risks her daughter would face as a young woman without the protection of a husband. “We live in corrupt and dangerous times,” she said. “It is better that she is married early.”
In Somaliland, the health messages about the risks associated with FGM (sometimes referred to as FGC, female genital cutting) have led to more girls undergoing clitoridectomy (the removal of the clitoris) instead of the more extreme infibulation (which involves the removal of the clitoris as well as the narrowing of the vaginal opening by creating a covering seal). But a World Vision study, “Examining the links between the practices of FGM/C and early marriage”, found that since the pressure to stop infibulation has increased, the pressure on girls to marry young has intensified because they fear being perceived as more open to premarital sex if they have not had the procedure. As 15-year-old Faiza explained: “It is better for my dignity to have a husband and children now.”
Kenyan teenage Maasai girls attend an alternative right of passage at Kilgoris, Trans Mara district, at a ceremony organised by an anti-female genital mutilation, campaign, Cherish Others Organisation. (Pic: AFP)
Martha Tureti, World Vision’s gender and development co-ordinator in Kenya, believes criminalisation has failed to eradicate the practice in the country. And stand-alone interventions, such as setting up rescue centres or introducing alternative rites of passage, have not been enough to alter deeply imbedded attitudes that put a high premium on girls’ sexual reputations and premarital virginity.
“If you only focus on the girls, the community still go ahead with the cutting anyway,” Martha told us. “We realised the importance of including boys so that they understand the dangers of FGM because otherwise they still demand to marry girls who have been cut.”
In northern Kenya, World Vision has sponsored the development of rites of passage that retain traditions like teaching the girls about their future adult roles, but replace FGM with reproductive health education that includes knowledge about the effects of genital cutting. One key to success has been persuading communities to identify their own adaptations to old traditions instead of trying to impose change from outside; holding ceremonies that include public endorsements from community leaders; and offering alternative income sources to the cutters. For example, a World Vision-sponsored ceremony involving 10-year-old girls in the northern district of Naivasha included the public endorsement of a local politician, as well as pledges from former cutters that they would abandon the practice in return for the gift of some goats that would provide them with alternative means of earning a livelihood.
A clear message from both the Young Lives and the World Vision research is that legal prohibition and intensive advocacy campaigns have not been enough to eradicate FGM. This is often because families feel unable to take the social consequences of making changes that go against the norm in close-knit traditional communities. So work towards the abandonment of FGM and early marriage must engage with the whole community and address the social norms that underpin the practices.
It is difficult for outsiders to predict what unintended consequences might arise in each circumstance as every community responds to change in different ways. But the Young Lives’ focus group findings demonstrate the importance of understanding from community members why some continue practicing FGM despite prohibition. World Vision’s experience has been that change is more likely if all the different interest groups in a community are involved in a non-judgmental dialogue about which solutions will work for them.
Ultimately, strategies to prevent FGM need to engage with the root causes of both FGM and early marriage: namely the unequal status of women and men, the desire to control female sexual activity and limited economic opportunities for women and girls.
Names have been changed at the request of World Vision.
Methodist church reverend Canaan Banana (left) and his wife Janet share a moment with then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe (centre) and his wife Sally five days before independence celebrations. (Pic: STF)
I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.
Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.
When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.
My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.
In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.
Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.
A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.
With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.
It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.
Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.
She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.
But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.
The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.
A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.
My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of dismissal are rescinded.
We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.
The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.
Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.
He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.
April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.
It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.
Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.
The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.
I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.
Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.
When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.
My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.
In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.
Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.
A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.
With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.
It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.
Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.
She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.
But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.
The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.
A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.
My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of dismissal are rescinded.
We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.
The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.
Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.
He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.
April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.
It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.
Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.
The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.
Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer living in exile in Europe. This piece was first published in the Mail & Guardian’s Zimbabwe edition.
By now you will have heard, in the most recent instance of testicular politics, that Kenya’s Parliament recently passed a Bill that will recognise what they call ‘polygamous unions’. Apparently there haven’t been any real legal provisions for this form of marriage to date, except for citizens of the Muslim faith through the Kadhi court system.
What makes this Bill notable is the fact that the male legislators – the majority – managed to get rid of a clause in the Bill that would require consent on the part of current spouses before a man could bring another contracted partner into his domestic situation. If the Bill is signed into law, wives who have enjoyed a legal monopoly on matrimonial benefits are going to lose their security of tenure just like that. Take note: Kenyan women can’t legally marry multiple men.
If I had a suspicious nature I would imply that judicious pillow-lobbying on the part of shrewd girlfriends and concubines probably explains the enthusiasm with which the Bill was passed. But did they have to turn the contract of marriage into a form of Russian roulette for all other women while they were at it? Of course this Bill deserved a protest. So I stand in solidarity with women of Kenya in terms of opposing this law.
I am disappointed to have to do so because I am very much in support of legalising polygamous marriage and have been for much of my life. Freedom and fair play, say I, and if people have to sign a legal contract for reproductive purposes then let’s at least offer every citizen the same range of flavours.
How did I get so corrupted? Simple, really. Catholic Mathematics.
When I was growing up in one of those delightfully cosmopolitan yet shockingly conservative “middle-class” families, I learned about the birds and the bees and the morality thereof. One man plus one woman plus some love equals legitimate offspring, full stop. Real life, though, didn’t make this lesson convincing. I highly recommend that all children supplement their social education by eavesdropping on their mothers’ conversations with her friends.
Sifting through rants about husbands’ secretaries who wear miniskirts and suchlike, I realised that things were not adding up. All unmarried women were chaste, married women were faithful and men couldn’t keep their zippers closed. Catholic Mathematics? I might not have been in secondary school but I could do addition and percentages. Someone wasn’t being forthright about these birds and bees.
The one who truly sank me, though, was the Zanzibari gentleman who moved next door when I was about eight or so. He had two lovely spouses: a plump older light-skinned one and a slim, shy, dark-skinned younger wife. Not only did they smell deliciously of incense and pilau spices, they seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company and any opportunity to lavish food and attention on anyone who walked through the door. They seemed happier and healthier than all the desiccated diplomatic wives who darkened our doors with gin and bitterness.
So I thought: yes. People grow up aspiring to their fantasies of fulfillment, be it financial security, fame, power, whatever. Me? Two husbands, maybe three. One to go out and make some serious bacon and wear bespoke suits with great ties to feed my craving for some alpha male. One to stick around at home and make sure the kids get to bed on time and we’re all eating enough greens and bully me into getting a pedicure. One to be the Saturday night special: excitingly undependable, prone to adventures that might land us in jail, entirely too charming and handsome for his own good.
What will I be doing? Well either recovering from a night out with Number Three or chairing a board or simply co-ordinating and popping out and loving the United Colors of Benetton offspring of our unconventional family. I said it was a fantasy. But when these things take root in your formative years, there’s no getting past it.
To lay the Catholic Mathematics to rest, I had to figure out a moral basis for it that works for me and it has to do with polyamorous principles. Turns out it’s entirely possible, and also sane. As usual the laws and legal system are not keeping pace with the progressive nature of our contemporary society. I am only angry with Kenya because this crusade is personal and they have made it difficult for everybody for chauvinist reasons.
Polygamy, mostly polyandry, has always been around and in principle I have no beef with it. But the point is, and always is, to be fair when it comes to legislation. You can’t refuse people rights because of their race, their religion or their just about anything unless you’re unspeakably heinous. So why is it still okay to get gender politics wrong?
By all means, let us condemn this silly Kenyan polygamy Bill and all that it represents. In the meanwhile, though, if anyone is writing up a real progressive alternative please swing it my way. There are guys out there to marry simultaneously and this woman is trying not to run out of time and available options, not to mention patience.
Elsie Eyakuze is a freelance consultant in print and online media from Tanzania, working mainly in the development sector. She blogs at mikochenireport.blogspot.com. Connect with her on Twitter.
Yesterday morning, my colleague got into his car to begin the hour-long commute from Nyanya to our office in downtown Abuja. Ten minutes into the drive out of his estate, he heard a loud explosion about 150 metres from where he was. At the sound of the explosion, he and other drivers slammed their brakes and almost veered off the road. His ears were ringing. The loud boom echoed in his head like a bell. Soon, the screams started. Then, people were running, scattering really, the usual purposefulness of ordinary Nigerians trying to make a living suddenly unrecognisable. The earth beneath him seemed to be shaking, and his entire body was shaking in tandem. The screaming mass of people had now blocked the road. From where he was, he could not yet see blood or destruction or destroyed buses or the crater that marked the spot where the bomb had hit. He clambered out of his car, then did what everyone else was doing: he ran towards the bus park ahead. He joined the early morning commuters as witnesses. He joined them in their despair.
“You know how busy Nyanya is in the mornings, especially Monday,” John told us when he finally made it to work an hour and a half later. It was 9.30am. “Can you imagine all those people, all of them trying to enter buses? There must have been like 200 or even 300 people there trying to make their way to their various places of work. There was so much blood. There was so much death. It was like a bad dream. I had to take pictures because even I didn’t believe my own eyes.”
He showed us his pictures, and it was just like he had said. So much blood. So much death. Like a bad dream.
Burnt and damaged vehicles are seen at the scene of the bomb blast explosion at Nyanya on April 14. (Pic: Reuters)
The reaction to the Nyanya bomb blast has been more visceral due to its proximity to the capital city; not because this is the first time that we have had terrible attacks on ordinary citizens on such a scale. During the country’s centenary celebrations in February, 43 children were killed in a school in Yobe. Twenty young girls were kidnapped in Borno State during this month. On Sunday, the day before the Nyanya bus park disaster, 68 people were killed in two villages just outside of Maiduguri. Before this attack, Boko Haram hadn’t attacked Abuja in two years. From reading the testimonies of survivors on the Testimonial Archive Project, it is obvious that the people most impacted by the violence are just ordinary Nigerians whose only sin was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The woman who lost her house to an aerial bombardment and the man who lost his two brothers the day they went to register for a session of school are just as human as those who died in Nyanya. But what happened yesterday hit closer to home than these previous incidences. Our colleagues almost lost their lives. Our drivers were calling in late. This particular attack left us with calls to make to our staff and our friends, families and loved ones.
Bystanders react as victims arrive at the Asokoro General Hospital in Abuja. (Pic: Reuters)
The official death toll from the bomb blast is 71, although a lot of journalist friends who went to Nyanya told me that at least 200 people have lost their lives. This discrepancy hints at the difficulty the media has faced in reporting the violence that has seized the country over the past few years. Unfortunately, the media’s difficulty in reporting, together with the fact that the attacks have been concentrated in the more remote states in the Muslim-predominant north, has added to the ethno-religious taint of the violence. Victims become “Muslims” and “Christians”, not “Nigerians”. Human beings are rendered as numbers. Politicians have used the deaths as cudgels with which to score points, and not one of us has stopped them. It has been easy to say that “those people” have just been “killing themselves”. This resignation and willful distance we have put between ourselves and the killings has allowed President Goodluck Jonathan his lukewarm response to the violence with only the most muted protests.
But perhaps the reason our response is so muted is because we know not to expect answers. We do not know any more about Boko Haram’s funders and supporters now than we did last year or the year before. Those of us who believed that Boko Haram are after Christians are not so sure anymore. A few hours after the bomb blasts, Jonathan issued a statement at the site of the bomb blasts, condoling with the victims. One could not help but notice that beleaguered Interior Minister Abba Moro, who just a month before had presided over a mass recruitment exercise that was so badly managed it caused stampedes in several locations, was there with him along with the Senate president, David Mark. Several hours later, Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) issued a statement through its press secretary, blaming the opposition, All Progressives Congress (APC), for the bomb blasts. That the country’s leaders choose politics over somber, urgent leadership is the strongest indication we have that the answers we seek will not come from these people. And as the 2015 elections loom, what answers we need to make sense of the senseless killings will be even fewer and farther between.
The sun shone outside my office window, but the mood never did lift. Throughout the day, family and friends from Lagos and elsewhere called to see if we were alright. We followed the news for information on casualties and deaths, where to donate blood, what little we could do to help. I left the office at 5pm and said goodbye to our office driver, another colleague who lives near Nyanya.
“Are you going home?” I asked him. He laughed.
“My sister, what choice do I have? Whatever it is, we have nowhere else to go. They know where we are and we don’t have any choice. If they come, they will meet us here.”
Saratu Abiola is a writer and blogger based in Abuja. Connect with her on Twitter or on her blog.
