#BeyondtheHashtags: Tracking the Gaps, Progress in Countering Insurgency

 Emerging Citizens’ Concerns (Online Collation) 

 Beginning from February 2014 when 20 young female students were reportedly abducted from Government Girls Senior Science Secondary School and Ashigar School of Business and Administrative Studies, Borno State, Spaces for Change.S4C launched a people-powered campaign using both the formal and informal media to heighten awareness of the growing threats to educational freedom of young school girls in northern Nigeria. 

Capitalizing on its strong online presence especially on Facebook, S4C moderated daily web conversations around the abductions to sustain the tempo of public outcry calling for the immediate release and safe return of the school girls. Within the intensely polarized discussions and fierce debates generating hundreds and thousands of commentaries on the violent crisis ravaging Northern Nigeria are cogent and compelling questions directed at the Nigerian government, the Borno State Government, the Nigerian military authorities, the legislature, the judiciary, the media, and private actors regarding the roles they played in the Chibok abduction saga.

                                   SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS

#BeyondtheHashtags: Invitation to a Stakeholders' Forum

#BeyondtheHashtags is the theme of a stakeholders’ forum seeking to generate a data bank of citizens concerns around the Chibok abductions and the rising insurgency in the northern part of the country. Within the spaces and bond of solidarity sustained by the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, the stakeholder’s forum scheduled to hold on Tuesday, May 20, 2014 at Aquatic Hall, Beside Water Park, Toyin Street, Ikeja, Lagos, by 9.00 a.m offers a dispassionate platform to mutually track and examine the progress and lapses in the handling of the Nigerian security crisis, and to demand answers together across the non-contentious divides.

#BringBackOurGirls, #AbductedBornoSchoolGirls, #ChibokGirls, tons of hashtag campaigns and people-powered street protests have successfully forced the Nigerian to take urgent action to rescue the girls, and further attracted international military assistance to Nigerian security forces. It must, however, be emphasized that the awaited rescue of #AbductedBornoSchoolGirls would be meaningless if the abduction and massacre of young girls and boys continue to reoccur, and their educational freedom remains threatened. #BeyondtheHashtags presents a fresh opportunity to know better the gaps to be filled; the challenges to be met through improved planning; the possible complementarity of skills, experiences and efforts; and the synergies that can and should emerge from beyond current operations and expectations. As Funke Tega-Phillips precisely stated, “We have protested. We now want to ask hard questions. We demand answers to those unresolved questions about the #AbductedBornoSchoolGirls saga!

Date:         Tuesday, March 20, 2014

Venue:   Aquatic Hall, Beside Waterparks, Toyin Street, Ikeja,  Lagos, Nigeria

Time:       9: 00 A .M
 



Working Towards a Safer Future for Young School Girls and Boys!

#BringBackOurGirls Lagos Second Protest March Ikoyi | 9.5.14

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Future Nigeria Project

The Future Nigeria Project, an initiative of the Leaders Club of the Christian Network for Justice and Community Development (CNJC), is an attempt to redefine leadership in Nigeria and to extricate Nigeria from the claptrap of the past- the claptrap of neo- feudalism and traditionalism. The Future Nigeria must be rooted in a social framework that enables the nation to solve its social and economic problems and remain stable. It must be rooted in a set of values, rules and institutions that enable the country compete with the rest of the world in a fast changing global economy. We must be a nation that survives in the future because we have built ourselves to last.

PHOTOSPEAK: RESCUE #AbductedBornoSchoolGirls #BringBackOurGirls

Speaking to newsmen,  the executive director of Spaces for Change, Ms. Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, stated that the Nigerian government has failed to live up to its primary obligations of protecting lives and property. More than two weeks after hundreds of school girls were abducted, the Nigerian government is yet to publish the accurate data of the missing girls. The plethora of federal and state government agencies that corner more than 70% of the annual budget to themselves have not come up with any known strategy or action plan for gathering accurate data of the number of missing, displaced, wounded and disappeared persons.  Without shame or guilt of underperformance on their part, both the state and federal government agencies now totally rely on the foreign media and external NGOs to assist them with routine data-gathering.

Beyond finding these girls, the government needs to tell us what it is doing to ensure the abduction of young school girls do not reoccur in the future. Finding these girls is not meaningful if they would be merely taken back to Chibok, where they are vulnerable to further attacks and re-abductions. The federal government must guarantee human security in Borno communities. In the meantime, the Nigerian government must take immediate steps to provide alternative education hubs in less volatile locations where these young girls can go to school and fully realize their potentials.

She further noted that the three major factors fuelling the crisis in the North East are: the uncertainty of the perpetrators, the uncertainty of prosecution and the uncertainty of justice. Finding these girls is imperative, but identifying the abductors of these young girls and ensuring that they are punished will demonstrate that the government is indeed serious about entrenching accountability in the fight against terrorism.