U.S. Journalist Mocks President Jonathan for His Article on Chibok Girls
Last Monday, an influential United States' newspaper The Washington Post has published President Goodluck Jonathan’s op-ed, Nothing is more important than bringing home Nigeria's missing girls. In his piece of writing, Jonathan explained why he had remained silent on the ongoing rescue operations of the hundreds Chibok town girls abducted by Boko Haram and pledged to spare no available resources to ensure the girls' safe release.
Recall that two and a half months ago, 276 young (aged 15-18) female students of a government-run girls' secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, were abducted by Boko Haram fighters. While 57 girls escaped their captors and were reunited with their families, 219 still remain missing, their fate unknown. Both Nigerian and foreign military forces – many world powers have offered the Nigerian Government their assistance in locating and eventually rescuing the girls – claimed to have determined the hostages’ whereabouts and reported intelligence breakthroughs, but little information on this was made public.
Yesterday, The Washington Post columninst Karen Attiah's sarcastic "true version" of Jonathan's message has appeared on the site. Attiah is a Ghanaian-American journalist whose works appeared in Associated Press, Huffington Post, Sahara Reporters, Al-Jazeera and America.gov, among others, and whose Nigeria-born mother had to relocate to Ghana to escape atrocities of the Biafran War.
In her piece, What Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan should have written, Attiah pens a more "genuine" letter "on behalf" of Nigeria's President.
It is worth noting that Jonathan's Washington Post article appeared just days after the Nigerian Government (more specifically, the state-run Agency of Nigeria) had signed a $1.2 million contract with a Washington, DC public relations company Levick to promote and redeem its image both abroad and in Nigeria. Attiah says the President of Nigeria's actions regarding the Chibok girls are now more directed more towards popularizing his persona ahead of the 2015 presidential election.
She implies that Jonathan should have acted on the issue and alerted the international community asking for assistance earlier than he had – but he did not expect such a high level of global awareness on the issue assuming that the world would dismiss it as yet another "African tragedy."
Attiah blasts Jonathan for hesitating to accept international counterterrorism assistance for Nigeria to appear as a winning side in the Nigeria-Boko Haram stand. On the other hand, she jabs West African leaders over remaining passive in dealing with their own problems, up to the point when foreign powers have to deal with them.
Attiah observes that Jonathan has been feeding the general public with the "good-faith assurances," while the Nigerian military had, about two weeks ago, submitted a final report on the abduction and insisted the findings remain confidential for security reasons.
She reminds of the brief confusion in mid-May caused by Jonathan's alleged plans to visit Chibok, when Nigerians were outraged by his "cancelling" the visit and flying to Paris, France to attend a security summit. Eventually, an official denied that Jonathan ever had such an intention, leaving many Nigerians frustrated. Attiah also mocks the attitude of the First Lady Dame Patience, whose name has also been tied to a number of scandals: on one occasion, she reportedly said "no girls were missing" and the whole Chibok abduction tragedy was a scam to tarnish her husband's image, and allegedly ordered the arrest of some #BringBackOurGirls social campaign leaders, although she and the police later denied the claims and presented their own version of events.
Attiah mentions human rights abuses perpetrated by the military and ridicules Nigerian Government's tradition of setting up "an international summit to organize a fact-finding commission of investigative inquiry to study the progress of ongoing investigations" for any issue that needs immediate addressing.
Finally, she comments on this concluding paragraph in Jonathan"s op-ed: "Something positive can come out of the situation in Nigeria: most important, the return of the Chibok girls, but also new international cooperation to deny havens to terrorists and destroy their organizations wherever they are..." by noting there is little positiveness in the fact that so much time has passed since the kidnap incident without any tangible results. Jonathan, she stresses, still assures Nigerians and the rest of the world that his government is doing its best, while "the world has seen what can happen when terrorism is left to run amok and the citizens of a country have little faith in the ability of their government to protect them."
Source: Legit.ng
