As it was in 2014 with the kidnap of the Chibok girls, so it is in 2018 with the Dapchi girls. The nation received the news of the kidnap of some students at Government Girls Secondary School Dapchi, Yobe, on Monday, February 19, 2018.

According to residents who spoke to the press, the attackers believed to be members of the notorious Boko Haram sect arrived the sleepy community in eight Toyota Hilux vehicles and one Tata Truck. They stormed the school where the students on sighting them ran for safety by climbing the school fence, while some were lucky, others were not so lucky as they were taken by the sect.

For a country who was thoroughly disgraced by an event so identical to this one it is staggering, and for a government that was elected into power based on the promise that an event of this kind would never happen again, the Buhari government has proven that it is inept and hasn’t learnt from the mistakes of its predecessors. For three days we could not ascertain whether this evil happened, the government (both state and federal) refused to provide an official position on whether they were kidnapped or not. When they did finally admit the event had occured, the debate moved to whether the girls had been released or not, while the government and the military released conflicting statements on the number of girls kidnapped.

While the army declared 94 of them missing, the state Government put its at 110. The state Governor, Ibrahim Geidam heaped the blame on the army for dismantling roadblocks, a position the army disagreed with. On its part, the federal government through the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has blamed those that want to rubbish the Buhari government for the kidnap. Who are they? Only Lai Mohammed can tell us.

We never learned from Chibok, instead of addressing the remote cause of the abduction and preventing future re-occurrence, Nigeria has chosen to play politics with it. Today the shame is on us once again as a nation that does not learn from its shortcomings. 105 Dapchi girls are missing.

tosin adesina