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A year ago 276 high school girl students were kidnapped from Chibok boarding secondary school located in the state of Borno in the north east of Nigeria. One year later, clearly the national response and global response has been ineffective and disappointing since 219 girls are still missing.<\/p>\n
The response from the former President Goodluck Jonathan was slow. Emmanuel Ogebe, a human rights lawyer<\/a>, showed that the authorities\u2019 apathy was obvious. He interviewed the population and the girls who escaped three months after the kidnapping, and reported that no police or other forms of inquiry had taken place.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the insecurity is real and affects everyday life in Borno, straining means of subsistence and the region\u2019s social balance. There is massive displacement of the population with 1.5 million forced out of their homes<\/a> among whom 70% are women and children.<\/p>\n Since the beginning of 2014, over 2000 women and girls were killed in Nigeria.<\/p>\n Although the #BringBackOurGirls<\/a> campaign got international attention with celebrities involved, a code of silence still sticks to the regular violence against women and youngsters in this part of the world.<\/p>\n While the killings in Paris were shocking and created the movements we know, the killing of 2000 people in Baga, Nigeria did not receive that same attention. BringBackOurGirls<\/a> along with many activists have not given up. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize Winner who defends school education for girls, has declared, \u201cIn my opinion, Nigerian leaders and the international community have not done enough to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n When women are taken hostages and utilized in a military way, whose patriarchal interest does it serve?<\/p>\n Should we question the lack of clear engagement of some leaders in the region of Lake Chad where important reserves of oil have been found? This oil reserve<\/a> is shared by Niger, Nigeria and Chad.<\/p>\n Chad\u2019s president, Idriss Deby Itno, has played a very obscure role<\/a>, sometimes supporting efforts to control Boko Haram and sometimes retreating from the coalition. He also trapped the Nigerian president into a deal to get back the girls, last September, and then nothing happened. Boko Haram\u2019s chief has been seen in armored vehicles made in Israel and used by the Chadian army. The French government has supported Deby, and French companies have also had important interests in the region. Nigerian leaders claim Chad is exploiting Nigerian oil using new drilling methods, while Nigeria is destabilized by Boko Haram\u2019s assaults. The Chadian opposition organization, Mouvement du trois fevrier M3F<\/a>, sees Deby as a pyromaniac fireman, spreading fire to better control oil exploitation in this area, thus expanding his political and economic control in the region, having already extended his stranglehold on the Central African Republic<\/a>. Corporations from abroad enjoy a piece of the pie. Boko Haram\u2019s thuggery is aided and abetted by this collusion by governments and corporate interests. And the victims are the school girls, who are still unaccounted for, and the terrorized population.<\/p>\n The questions surrounding the girls\u2019 kidnapping and disappearance are a reminder that women\u2019s lives are subjugated to the interest of a market system that knows no limits in using manipulation and spreading violence.<\/p>\n The exploitation of Nigeria’s oil reserves has a long history. Three decades ago, activists and writers tried to defend the precious Ogoni lands from being exploited by Shell Oil Company. The Nigerian government colluded with Shell Oil, which in turn was strongly supported by both the U.K. and the U.S. Nigeria tamped down the protests by executing the activists, despite international protests. Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose death, he himself predicts in his writing, clearly articulated and challenged the neoliberal corporate and political interests at the expense of the Ogonis. Today his words ring truer than ever as we see the brutal murder of women that mask the transnational neoliberal corporate and political greed to increase the oil fortunes of the one percent.<\/p>\n In this context, Boko Haram\u2019s members maybe viewed as modern mercenaries. Their main targets are women, and to complete their grip on the populations they also target schools, with 900 schools burned in northern Nigeria and some 176 teachers killed. They seek to normalize violence and vulnerability. But resistance continues to be organized and women\u2019s rights organizations<\/a> have engaged in making these crimes visible. Resistance movements are not giving in. On March 14, one year after the abduction of the girls, a Global School March<\/a> was organized worldwide. Women are demanding the newly elected Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari who will start his mandate on May 29th<\/sup> to fulfill his promise and to step up the process to save these young women. The movement goes further and demands global protection of women and girls to teach and attend school and to enforce protection of rights. This is a global threat against women and against humanity, which is not poverty driven but driven by vested interests that impoverish and manipulate populations.<\/p>\n We cannot stop marching.<\/p>\n In Pramila Venkateswaran\u2019s \u201cWhen they Hang a Poet,\u201d poet – activist Ken Saro-Wiwa protests neoliberal exploitation of the Ogonis, and is killed by the Nigerian government. But his words live on, and the protests continue. Try as they might, government and corporations will fail to snuff out the voices raised to preserve democracy free of violence\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n When they Hang A Poet\u2026 You spoke of a green earth\u2014your dream They hanged Saro-wiwa: syllables shock the air (published in The Kerf, 1997)<\/p>\n (Photo Credit: bellanaija.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A year ago 276 high school girl students were kidnapped from Chibok boarding secondary school located in the state of Borno in the north east of Nigeria. One year later, clearly the national response and global response has been ineffective and disappointing since 219 girls are still missing. The response from the former President Goodluck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4005,880,5311,5079,1907],"class_list":["post-18574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-bringbackourgirls-2","tag-brigitte-marti","tag-chibok","tag-nigeria","tag-pramila-venkateswaran","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18574"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25915,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18574\/revisions\/25915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>For Ken Saro-Wiwa<\/em><\/p>\n
\na filament of the earth\u2019s desire.
\nYou wrote of Africa pillaging
\nherself, a prostitute \u201cchoosing\u201d
\nher destiny. I see your blood
\nin my quiet hands, in the hands
\nof my country, in the hands
\nof every human being caught
\nin the clamor of living,
\nin the hands of corporate souls
\non whom desire sticks like sin;
\nin the hands of your land, your sentence
\nis as extraordinary as a poet\u2019s nightmare.<\/p>\n
\nas leaves weep on the cold, cold dirt.
\nBut your words spread like a rain-storm filling
\ndecrepit croplands of the Ogoni.<\/p>\n