Today makes it two years since the sleepy town of Chibok in Borno State was thrust into global limelight with the abduction of 276 girls from the Government Girls’ Secondary School in the town by the dreaded Islamist terrorist sect, Boko Haram.

In the early days, the Federal Government led by former President Goodluck Jonathan was in denial and initially doubted that the abduction had taken place while the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima kept seeking a security response to the abduction with the aim of rescuing the girls.

In the eyes of the Jonathan administration and many of its supporters, it was a hoax aimed at embarrassing the government. According to Governor Shettima, it took 18 days before President Jonathan got in touch with him regarding the girls.

By then, the early days – which were crucial to stopping the terrorists – were lost, and save for the 57 girls who escaped either by jumping down from the trucks used to move them or escaped from the camp(s), it is obvious that the captors of the girls were long gone by then.

However, the grudging admission by the Jonathan administration did not stop the abduction of the girls from being used as political football between supporters of the administration and its fiercest critics:

There were still denials in quarters about the abduction, such as from the former National Women’s’ Leader of the then ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, Mrs. Kema Chikwe; there was the fiasco involving then First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan who on her own decided to launch an investigation and invited the principal of the school and which ended up gifting Nigeria the video of her crying which went viral; her infamous ordering of the arrest of two leaders of the Chibok women community in Abuja for ‘trying to embarrass her husband’; and the constant attempt by many supporters to poke holes in the abduction story and shift blames as far away from the Presidency as possible.

If not for the emergence of the Bring Back Our Girls movement, which its trademark hashtag #BringBackOurGirls and led by former Minister of Education Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili and other women activists such as Hadiza Bala Usman and Aisha Yesufu, no doubt that this abduction, like many others before, and even after it, would have been swept under the rug.

But in a stark contrast to past behavior, Nigeria, a nation that is infamous for ‘moving on’ from tragedies while those affected by them are left to pick up the pieces of their lives, could not move on from this abduction.

The rallying cry, #BringBackOurGirls went international, picked up by Hollywood celebrities, the American First Lady Michelle Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yousufzai who even visited Nigeria and met with the parents of the abducted girls and President Jonathan.

Without doubt, the Jonathan administration mishandled the situation, and caused not only local angst against it, but a feeling of disappointment with it amongst foreign countries and leaders.

Indeed, it was heavily used against it in the run-up to the 2015 general elections by the then opposition All Progressives’ Congress (APC) and its candidate, Muhammadu Buhari who promised to end Boko Haram insurgency within six months and rescue the girls from their captors.

However, it is almost a year since the swearing-in of President Buhari who eventually won the elections, and precious little has changed in the fortunes of the abducted girls.

Information about them is still hard to come by, and there are doubts as to whether they are still held in Sambisa Forest as previously claimed, considering how the forest has been repeatedly bombed and combed by the Nigerian military.

While hundreds of persons also abducted by the terrorists have been released, none of the girls happen to be among them – a clear indication that the terrorists are holding the girls as a prized possession with preferential treatment, a fact even confirmed from previous abductees who claim to have met them.

A spate of suicide bombings over the past few months involving mostly young girls has raised the question whether the abducted girls are used as human weapons, and an attempted suicide bomber arrested in Northern Cameroon was initially claimed to be one of the girls until it was disproved by the parents of the girls.

The most information regarding the conditions of the girls has come from a Boko Haram video released this week, showing the girls as confirmed by their parents. However, their location is still unknown.

It is apparent that there is a paucity of intelligence regarding the whereabouts of the girls, how many are alive and what conditions they are kept in. This is directly related to the inability of President Muhammadu Buhari so far to fulfill his electoral promise of bringing the girls back home.

But we must try not to lose hope on these girls. It is indeed worth appreciating the fact that Nigeria, a nation that is infamous for ‘moving on’ from tragedies and disasters while those whose lives have been affected by it are left to pick up the pieces of their lives, has stayed on this issue.

Special credit must be given to the Bring Back Our Girls Movement, for making sure that we never forgot about the abducted Chibok girls – through controversy, denials and the grudging acceptance of many.

As we mark the 2nd year of the abduction of the girls, the Federal Government must not stop trying to find the girls and must go to any lengths necessary to rescue not just the girls, but all others who are in captivity from Boko Haram.

We continue to stand with the parents and the Chibok community, and share in their pain and sorrow.