On 13th June, the Abuja Family of the #BringBackOurGirls movement reflected upon 60 days of the Chibok Girls in bondage and 45 days of its own continuous sittings and marches by the movement. The day had started with an agent provocateur announcing on Channels TV that the leader of the Movement, Oby Ezekwesili has received a bribe to provide leadership for the patriotic demands by the movement that Government should rescue the girls. Indeed over the past six weeks, Oby has been inundated by attacks, insults and lies all aimed to tarnish her image and reputation. Apparently, an army of character assassinators has been recruited and deployed in the mass media and social media with the specific assignment to impugn the character of Oby Ezekwesili. It is a sad commentary on the nation that people who are looting the treasury are rewarded with chieftaincy titles and national honours while those working hard to promote transparency and accountability are maligned and blackmailed. My only happiness is that Oby has remained steadfast and focused on the campaign and resisted with success the attempts to derail the great work she is doing.
Dr. Salma Kolo, Borno State Commissioner for Health briefed the rally on what the State Government had been doing. A Technical working Group had been established to provide psychosocial support for the girls who escaped from bondage and their families. The work is being done in close collaboration with the Chibok community and the United Nations Population Fund she explained. The whole community is traumatised and so far seven parents of the abducted girls have died of stress related to the trauma they suffered. The State Government and stakeholders are mapping all families involved not only in Chibok’s 11 wards but also in other Local Government Areas such as Gwoza and Dambua. So far, 40 of the escapee girls have been reached and are undergoing counselling. Many commentators were unhappy that 60 days after, not all the girls had been reached and called on the Borno State Government to do more and treat the matter with the urgency it deserved. In her response, she accepted the necessity to do more and act with greater speed but she lamented the fact that the problem is vast. She pointed out that on a daily basis, girls are still being abducted from Fulani and Shuwa pastoralist’s families deep in the rural hinterland.
