We are Baga
Here I am worrying about my introduction, while hundreds of
women my age and younger have been kidnapped by Boko Haram. Stories of
survivors describe the horror of sexual
slavery and of being paraded before militants to become forced wives.
I first heard about the attack on Baga on Thursday evening and
didn’t want it to be true. I heard about it again on Friday and could not turn
away from the truth; Boko Haram has razed to the ground the town in Borno
State, northern Nigeria, which once had a population of about 10,000 people. This
is the second
attack on the town this month and the extremist sect killed nearly 2,000 people on Wednesday, 7th
January. According to one article, the victims were mostly children,
women and the elderly who could not run fast enough when the militants attacked
the town with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
Civilians in Borno State have been left, time and time again,
to defend themselves against Boko Haram while – guess what? – our
leaders have been rallying to win votes for next
month’s national elections. There are no words to describe this level of cruelty. But
in Nigeria, as always, life continues; as fighters of a local defense group in
Baga stayed up all night on Thursday trying to count corpses, the rest of us
tucked ourselves into bed and slept quite comfortably. More than 10,000 people
have been killed by Boko Haram since 2009, over a million Nigerians have been
displaced, hundreds of thousands are now refugees in Chad and Cameroon, and
hundreds of children have been separated from their parents. But yet we
sleep comfortably.
I remember when I was living in Abuja in 2012 and Boko Haram
seemed to have recommenced their reign of terror; bombing churches in Kaduna,
and bombing the This
Day newspaper complex in Utako, to name a few. I remember my cousin and I
stayed home on a few Sundays because we were scared of going to church. At the
time, I imagined the killings would end; that the terror would either die down or the military would find a way to curb it. But three years later,
and here we are neck-deep in bloodshed. What confuses me most is how we are
able to get on perfectly well with our lives while people are dying in the North
every day.
And I speak to myself first. I spent the past week worrying
about who would anchor my introduction next weekend, if the makeup artist would show up because I’ve been unable to reach her, figuring out when I need to
go to my tailor to try on my outfit, and arranging accommodation for my in-laws.
I turned 27 last year and will be getting married this year; girls ten years
younger than I am have been in Boko Haram captivity for months now and it seems
as though more
and more women and girls are being kidnapped by the sect as the months go
by, with little to no knowledge of Nigerians. We are so wrapped up in our own world,
so lost in our own businesses that we forget it could easily be us. When the
Niger-Deltan militants began their emancipation campaign a
few years ago, it was the people and companies in the Niger-Delta that paid the
price for the level of insecurity. Today the North is suffering. None of us is immune to terror. We
should not turn a blind eye today simply because the terror is not
happening in our vicinity; it could easily be our lives and families in the
line of fire tomorrow.
There are no words to describe the hell that is currently happening
in Nigeria, and what adds to it is the apathy and complacency with which our
supposed leaders are ‘handling it’. President Jonathan was asked by Adeola Fayehun last year
how he planned on rescuing the Chibok Girls. Our president’s response was, “We
are working on it… we are working on it very hard.” What sort of comfort does
this response give to grieving parents and families?
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