By Muhammad Sagir Bauchi
History teaches us about past events. It answers questions of ‘how’ ‘where’ and ‘when’ did events occurred. The essence of seeking answers to such questions is nothing more than to reflect and avoid repeating same mistakes.In Nigeria, History was a curriculum subject before it was removed from the secondary school curriculum.
About four weeks ago, around 8pm to be precise, my immediate younger brother who happened to be in his 20s as usual parked his motorcycle at home. Few minutes after parking the bike, he received a friend’s phone call, asking him to lend him the bike to attend a reception! Alas, my brother refused to honor the request, but he promised to take him to the venue of the reception.
Despite that he is not used to going out without informing our mom, but on that fateful day, around 9:30pm he took his bike without informing her! The clock ticked 11:30 pm, yet, this young brother was still not home and we tried his phone number where it rang, but the call wasn’t picked. To cut the story short, on that day, I along with our parents couldn’t sleep till dawn, wandering where he was! Needless to tell you the situation our mom found herself into, for you all know the bound between mother and her child. The next day, we got to know that he was arrested by police patrol team on his way back home from the reception.
Around February, 2014 a deadly attack was carried out by BH Terrorists in Federal Government College Buni Yadi of Yobe state, in which the lives of about Fifty students were lost.
In that same year, the same deadly terrorist group,p Boko Haram invade a female boarding school in Chibok and took away hundreds of girls in the school. That has happened a time when the Northeastern region was faced with heartbreaking number of out of school children, the tragedy of Chibok girls abduction and the killing of Buni Yadi students led many parents to stop their wards from attending school; out of fear of loosing them.This was done during the era of n administration that Northerners regard as “the most clueless”.Efforts were put in place to rescue those abducted school girls, a politically clouded campaign team known as Bring Back Our Girls (#BBG) was formed by the then major opposition figures to force the government to rescue those girls, airwaves and internet were always buzzing with Chibok stories, yet, the efforts were unsuccessful. Until the present administration tried and rescue some of them.
Later on in 2018, the same terror group abducted more than Hundred children in the same region, this time in a different state.The abduction of girls in Dapchi draws the attention of the local and international media, which led them to raised their voice at same time. Fortunately, most of them were rescued, but there remains a girl that was not released by their abductors.
These and many more historical occurences occurred in a region ravaged with high rate of illiteracy, poverty and lack of social amenities! Not only that, the region has strong shock absolvers to survive the effects of Boko Haram Terrorists activities.
On Friday 11th of December, the Commander in Chief of Armed of Forces of Nigeria arrived the ancient city of Daura (his home town) for a one week vacation. The president and some of his entourage arrived Katsina via a plane, and later on, transported to Daura via a helicopter.To date, all his trip from Abuja-Katsina, he neither use a car nor their main road. Even his trip to Daura, he flew a helicopter. This is to tell us that he might not be aware of the dangers of Nigeria’s death traps (roads) and how kidnappers consistently attacks road users.
Some hours after the arrival of the President, a group of armed men with AK-47s invade a government owned school in Kankara (a town of short distance away from the President’s vacation home) and abduct about Six Hundred Students, although, later on almost half of them were lucky to escape the kidnappers along the way, but over Three Hundred are still with the kidnappers or unaccounted!
Now, let me take you back a bit, compare the one night pain and fear my mother went through for not knowing the whereabout of that my younger brother and that of parents of those Six Hundred Students!
At this juncture, I want to believe that, due to the present economic meltdown facing the nation, it is almost impossible for the majority of the parents of these abducted students to source for the ransom money to freed their children, as it is rare for the elites with financial strength to enroll their own in a govt secondary school, public schools are for the have-nots!
In an effort to contain the situation, the Governor of Katsina State ordered the closure of all boarding schools in the state pending new security arrangement by his government. This is a time, where the education sector is trying to overcome the aftermath effect of Covid-19 lockdown on the sector, today, all the boarding schools are closed!This add more salt to an already inflicted injury, since that even the central government is not certain of how and when this ravaging insecurity would be overcome. As usual, the President only managed to expressed condemnation of the “Cowardly Attack”.
As stated above, the school that witnessed that ugly abduction is only a few kilometers away from the President’s home town. Although, he was on hand that he managed to visit his farm house and checked on his animals, yet, he only sent a delegation to the grieving parents!
During the #EndSARS violence, the Speaker of the National Assembly vowed not to approve the 2021 appropriation budget until a provision to compensate people of his constituency and region that loss their lives and properties on the hand of #EndSARS is included in the budget! Alas, this is happening at a time where many were killed in the North.
Last August, a day after the Beirut explosion that claimed the lives of over 300 persons and rendered thousands homeless, the then Lebanese Prime minister announced his resignation because he felt that as the C-in-C of the country, he failed to secure the lives of his country men and women!
During the campaign tension, INSECURITY was the major weapon used to oust the Jonathan government, the current president was quoted saying, “Jonathan should vacate and give way to competent hand to govern the country”. Unfortunately, insecurity is now all over the Northwestern part of the country.
If HISTORY is something of important to our leaders, they would’ve adopt the like of RATIONAL EXPECTATION THEORY and use what happened in Buni Yadi, Chibok and Dapchi to predict and prevent the occurrence of the recent attack of Kankara School.
Finally, this Kankara scenario is a litmus test for the president to look into history with passion for future deterrence and use his power to bring in ambitious, fresh and capable hands from the military with feasible and contemporary ideas to end these insecurity menace ravaging the country. And for the then Globetrotting Chibok #BBG Campaigners, this is another chance for you to give your all for those abducted young Nigerians with zeal for education to be free from their abductors and to pursue their educational careers in a secured environment!
Sagir writes via:
ibrahimsagir1227@gmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sky Daily
