by Tunde Leye

There were military men guarding Chibok school who were outgunned and murdered by the Boko Haram fighters. Who is telling their story, making them into heroes for the sacrifice they have made? 

People are not statistics. As simple as this statement is, the Nigerian state often acts otherwise. Compare, for example, the manner in which America handled the Boston Bombing victims. Or the way the passengers in the recent Malaysian Airline aircraft that disappeared were handled. Or even the way the South Korean school children who sank in Yellow Sea were handled. I will draw some analogies from these and contrast with the way all of us as Nigerians, from the state to the press and the people have failed woefully.

First is the way the bodies of the victims are treated. In all of these places, the corpses were decently packed in body bags and the gore was never shown to the public. The respect with which the bodies are treated is a reflection of the kind of premium these societies place on the dignity of their citizens, even in death. In Nigeria, when there is one disaster or terrorist attack, we are inundated with pictures of body parts piled anyhow, bodies dumped in police pickup trucks and all such gore. What it would take to get body bags, I really do not know. Why some people on social media assume sharing the goriest of the images is the best, only them understand. And we keep doing this with every disaster, every single time. It shows a blatant disrespect for the dignity of our people and the sensibilities of relatives that might possibly stumble upon such pictures. I cannot imagine anything more traumatizing than discovering that a loved one is dead via seeing a picture of the person’s mangled body.

Observe how the press in the countries and internationally have stayed on the stories of those disasters consistently for months. Focus, continual unrelenting focus. In spite of the faintness of the hope of ever finding anything and the fact that the passengers are almost certainly dead, CNN and AlJazeera have not stopped reporting the Malaysia Airline flight for months. They have explored every angle, dug up every detail about every passenger and crew member and technical details of the flight. They have gotten all of us interested in this search and its outcome. The same goes for the Boston Bombing and the South Korean boat disaster. Not so in the Nigerian case. Apart from a few reports and on social media where the calls have been strong, there has not been any concerted press focus on the Chibok girls abduction. The press simply spares a few reports and bandies around figures and statistics in a way that does nothing for truly engaging and informing the whole country and crafting the narrative necessary to pressure the government into action and support our armed forces as they act. It is an epic failure on the press that we do not know the exact number of girls that went missing, and the names of these girls. As long as they are numbers, their humanity is lost in the stats. The moment we begin to name the girls and tell their unique stories, we humanize them and pressure those that are in the position to do something into action.

There is also a communication problem. When disasters and attacks such as Nyanya and Chibok happen, it is of utmost importance for the government to talk to its people. They must reassure the people that they are in charge and let them know that is being done to deal with the perpetrators. Silence is unacceptable. Gallivanting in the name of politics is condemnable and shows a lack of empathy on the towards the people and can be a morale drainer to any military agent who is fighting insurgents in the heat of Sambisa Forest. Heating up the polity with unguarded and sometimes plain stupid utterances is devious. Politicizing the disasters and terror attacks should tell us that such politicians and their agents do not have our best interests at heart. Allowing the terrorists to take initiative of the crafting the narrative up to the point of threatening the parents of the abducted girls is a failure.

We must humanize the victims. I challenge every English teacher nationwide to give their students an assignment. Tell them to imagine being abducted by Boko Haram and then tell them that students like them have been abducted while preparing for exams. Ask them to write an essay describing what they imagine the Chibok girls to be going through at the hands of their captors at the moment. They can begin to send these essays as letters to the politicians responsible for their areas, from senators, to governors and all the way to the presidency. Let them paint vivid pictures that will show the humanity of the girls and the trauma of their experience. We must disabuse the minds of everyone from the notion that Borno is so far away and what is happening there could as well be the other end of the world. It is the daily reality of some people, Nigerians like you and I, and we must live with this consciousness. A life lost in Borno is not less than one lost in Lagos, Abuja or Port Harcourt.

I return to the theme of taking responsibility where there is a failure. Just yesterday, the Prime Minister of South Korea resigned over the handling of the drowning issue, because the response to the tragedy was deemed slow. He took personal responsibility. No one demanded his resignation publicly, yet he turned it in. There was misinformation from the military days after the Chibok abduction about the rescue of most of the girls. They eventually retracted these claims, after the principal of the Chibok school and the parents of the girls debunked it. No one has taken personal responsibility for such a blunder.

Finally, we need to observe the way the people in these other countries come out to support their law enforcement and military when these disasters happen or terrorists strike. Fighting insurgencies is not easy. Ask the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the British with the IRA. Those of us that are in Lagos, Abuja and other parts of the country yet unreached by Boko Haram must realize that all that prevented them from overrunning the country was our military. The fight within their base in Borno is the most difficult phase of the war and we must support them. By we, I mean all of us, including the president and other top politicians. Support comes from simple things like a surprise visit to troops in the battlefront in Borno from the president to boost morale.

Support is ensuring that our troops are properly supplied and all logistics needed are made available to them. Support is ensuring that those that murder military men are brought to book and the families they leave behind are well taken care of. It is sad that over a year after Ombatse murdered Mobile Policemen, no one has been brought to book. Support comes from the press and we the people. There were military men guarding Chibok school who were outgunned and murdered by the Boko Haram fighters. Who is telling their story, making them into heroes for the sacrifice they have made? Did we see the way the South Koreans press and people have continued to make the young woman who gave her life to save 50people on the boat that sank into a hero? We must learn to do this for our military men. They are fighting a difficult battle and must be celebrated. A word of caution though – the military and government agencies must make themselves supportable. Responding as they did in the Ciaxon matter will only erode the support of the people. The people are not the enemy.

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Tunde Leye tweets from @TundeLeye

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.