BURNING POT BY PRINCE CHARLES DICKSON
Nigeria: If We Had 10 Seconds To #Bringbackourgirls
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“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…" he murmured. I looked
away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word. “What a stupid
lamb," I sighed. “What a sick, masochistic lion.” ― Stephenie Meyer
I have two lovely lads, I can't begin to narrate, explain,
introduce, discuss, and analyze how much they mean to their mom or
me.
However, once, I took turn to pick them from school and one of them
was stuck in the toilet for some 10minutes, in which the whole
school searched everywhere for him. Everywhere we looked, but the
toilet.
I can't begin to explain every 10 seconds in that everlasting 10
minutes, the trauma, confusion and all that.
So back to Chibok, having commented last week on the schoolgirls
abduction, I had in my hope believed by now, we did be talking about
the rescue mission, how it happened, who was the hero, but
importantly that the girls were with their families.
Painfully, we are now on #bringbackourdaughters and #bringbackourgirls,
what I would call the usual spot. And before you wonder, what and
where is the usual spot, I would tell you, it is that spot where
there is an interlude before the closure. In other words I tell us
painfully if care is not taken, soon we may consign these girls to
history.
So I just wondered, if your daughter, sister, mother, was abducted,
in 10secs what would you want. 10secs in the forest of Sim-whatever.
10secs with Boko Haram to get your loved one. What would occupy your
mind?
Would you be looking for popular human rights lawyer and activist,
Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) to sue this administration over its failure to
rescue the innocent victims of Boko Haram terrorists? It’s that you
would do with10secs only!
Would you spend 10secs-debating Boko Haram as Northern conspiracy
against a South-South president? Or bother about soldier motivation,
corruption and insincerity on the part of the government in the
fight against Boko Haram.
In the 10secs that you have, I am not too sure; you would care about
WAEC, still trying to find out the exact number of students
abducted. It would concern us less that even the Chibok school
principal's story is incoherent.
We just blame the president for everything. We Nigerians like to
criticize and score cheap political point without providing the
alternatives to the problem. So would you rather go-a-blaming or
looking to get our girls.
If Boko Haram picked my boys, the last thing on my mind would be
whether the government sets up a committee or the 1st lady, is
threatening to stage a protest match to Chibok, Borno, if the
abducted schoolgirls were not released or volunteering to get shot
for them.
We want our girls back, but a friend captures it, saying we didn't
speak out when a governor was stealing billions and cutting the
hands of poor citizens who stole chicken just to score a cheap
political point. We mad small noise about sanusi and co. but we did
not #bringthemoneyback, I could reel out a list of atrocities we did
not change…and now to even #bringbackourgirls has become a political
tool.
We have spent loads of seconds debating to "To an ordinary
Southerner, Boko Haram is the creation of Northern elites to make
the Jonathan's administration ungovernable. To an ordinary
Northerner, Boko Haram is the creation of the Jonathan-led
government in order to decimate the population of northerners and to
destroy their economy. But to Boko Haram there is no distinction
between northerner and southerner or Muslim and Christians. Their
goal is to cause terror and their target knows no such bounds."
While others are noisemaking as netzens, and our daughters are out
there, so what would I do if I had 10secs? I would tell us this
small gist. And leave us to reflect on what matters
On July 4, 1952, Florence Chadwick was on her way to becoming the
first
woman to swim the Catalina Channel. She had already conquered the
English Channel.
The world was watching. Chadwick fought the dense fog, bone-chilling
cold and many times, the sharks. She was striving to reach the shore
but every time she looked through her goggles, all she could see
was the dense fog. Unable to see the shore, she gave up.
Chadwick was disappointed when she found out that she was only half
a mile from the coast. She quit, not because she was a quitter but
because her goal was not in sights anywhere. The elements didn't
stop her.
She said, "I'm not making excuses. If only I had seen the land, I
could have made it." Two months later, she went back and swam the
Catalina Channel. This time, in spite of the bad weather, she had
her goal in mind and not only accomplished it but beat the men's
record by two hours.
Would we continue fighting each other, trading blames, uncovering
and discovering conspiracies, or rather fix our eyes on our goal and
neglect all the distraction and discouragement by the elements along
our way? Do we really want to #bringbackourgirls, it depends on what
our focus is, are we ready to #bringbackourdaughters--only time will
tell.
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