12 years after the abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls, with over 90 still missing, leaders in the Southern Borno community have decried that their community is being attacked every week, calling for urgent intervention.
This claim was made by the President of Kibaku Area Development Association (KADA), Nkeki Mutah, during a recent interview on Arise News.
Screenshot of Nkeki Mutah, President of KADA.
On 1 January 2015, Mutah, who is also the father of one of the abducted schoolgirls, cried as he addressed a meeting to review efforts to recover the abducted Chibok girls in Abuja.
The interview came on the heels of an alleged protest that was organised by stakeholders in Chibok amid incessant attacks.
“We just came and released our grievances.”
Clearing the air about an alleged protest in the Southern Bornon community, Mutah clarified that, “We didn’t stage a protest. We had a press release or what we also called a press conference. And as you can see, the real picture which you display, you know, consists of all our women and we who were available on that day.”
He emphasised that they expressed serious concerns about security in their community, which has come under constant attacks by Boko Haram insurgents, and provided reasons for the protest.
“We just came and released our grievances, released our plea to the government for them to intervene. So that’s the correction I want to make in that regard. Deliberate in the sense that, in fact, to us as Chibok nationality, we talked about even the arrival of Boko Haram started their carnage because of our tribe.
“The reason was what? They started this carnage around 2009, but from 2011, even some of our students, Chibok students who were in Maiduguri at that time, they didn’t even become so widely known.”
“These people came unexpectedly, carted away our daughters in a constitutional government.”
Mutah, who had described the Chibok abduction of schoolgirls in 2014 “as an open wound, which has refused to heal,” added that “right from that time to this date, Chibok has never remained for a week that Boko Haram did not come and either abduct our citizens in Chibok land or kill our people.”
The Chibok community leader suggested the failure of the government to protect the people in his community, despite being under a constitutional democracy.
“They’ve been moving from one point to another where Chibok people were either having trading or artisanship or doing their handwork. They will go and kill our people, Chibok people in particular. Now, when they started to escalate, all of a sudden, in 2012, they came and attacked Chibok. At that time, none of the villages around Chibok, apart from Maiduguri itself.
“Nobody in any of the villages knew about Boko Haram. But around 2012, they came to Chibok, killed people, and kidnapped some people. Now, the thing is serial. In 2014, as you all know, this issue became a global one. These people came unexpectedly, carted away our daughters in a constitutional government; almost 300 girls,” he lamented.
“It’s like the people in authority…don’t want the insurgents to even finish.”
Asked about what needs to be done to bring healing or what in some quarters is referred to as closure, given that some of the Chibok girls have been freed, and reunited with their families, while some are still alive there in captivity, the President of KADA suggested that it seems the Borno State government does not want the insurgency to be over.
“If I should ponder and describe what really is happening to our people, it’s like the people in authority, in particular our state, it’s like they don’t want the insurgents to even finish.
“Otherwise, a lot of handwriting of what is happening, even in Chibok land, the handwriting that is happening. It is now telling us that it is really in support of all what the insurgents are doing. I don’t have to mention it, but I’m telling you. If I should talk to you personally, when you look at the handwriting of what the authority in Borno state is doing.
“They are doing all things that [are] in support of what Boko Haram is doing. That’s the truth. In Chibok, I’m talking in Chibok. I’m not talking in Boko Haram, but in Chibok, what the government of Borno state is doing is like they are doing the handwriting of what Boko Haram is out for,” he claimed.
