In the years following 2005, there used to be a popular term for emails announcing that someone has won GBP 1000000 and all they have to do is contact either a given number or email to the given address - the Nigerian mail. Those who were investigating cyber crime as well as the victims of such mail used to shudder at the ingenuity with which scores of people got duped into paying hundreds of thousand bucks for the victims avarice. No one knows whether Nigerians were the originators of such fraud but the name stuck.
Nigeria is famous again - this time courtesy Boko Haram. Kidnapping of girl children from school is nothing new. Dozens of dirty organisations have done such things before. But consider this:
1. News reports suggest that these girls are being sold for $12. The world has just been told on World Mothers Day that this is the worth of our mothers, sisters and girl children set by Boko Haram.
2. Thousands of children across Nigeria have been withdrawn from school by their parents. Boko Haram has just ensured that Nigeria's young generation are pushed towards the dark ages of illiteracy and subsequent unemployment and poverty.
3. The world governments, AU, EU and the government of Nigeria are still scratching their head as to what to in the face of such brutal, inhuman and scruple-less act of Boko Haram - as though the world has not seen enough to decide swift and decisive action. Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Liberia and Cambodia actually are history and we have a penchant for reading history only from our arm chairs.
4. As the world keeps twiddling its fingers, Boko Haram continues to get its arms supplies and financial back up from unknown sources. Dozens of arms manufacturers around the world and illegal financiers are minting their money. Few hundred more girls being added to the thousands of already vandalised-and-sold-into-prostitution women do not make any difference to them. Nor do they make any difference to those countries that facilitate exporting of those arms or are the conduits for the black money.
At the end of it all, we can be rest assured that ten-twenty years hence there would be an international tribunal for Nigeria and leaders of Boko Haram (who may well be on their natural way to their graves) would be sentenced to 150 years in prison. Countries would contribute monies to hold the tribunal and subsequently house the imprisoned. Lawyers on either side would also have earned their due out of the legal process. A jubilant world will observe that the end of international justice has been served well and that now there are more immutable precedences for offences against women during hostile conditions. Everyone will be happy.
In the mean time, the girls abducted by Boko Haram would have begotten their children out of their captivity with Boko Haram. Growing up in a country that fears to send its children to school and finding that their poverty is so oppressing, they may fall prey to taking up arms. They may perpetuate what Boko Haram has as yet left undone.
The Nigerian Nightmare....Hello world...anyone listening? How about doing something to stop the nightmare turning into reality?
PS: Looks like I must start writing scripts for movies. It might help me to get money to buy history books and an arm chair.
Nigeria is famous again - this time courtesy Boko Haram. Kidnapping of girl children from school is nothing new. Dozens of dirty organisations have done such things before. But consider this:
1. News reports suggest that these girls are being sold for $12. The world has just been told on World Mothers Day that this is the worth of our mothers, sisters and girl children set by Boko Haram.
2. Thousands of children across Nigeria have been withdrawn from school by their parents. Boko Haram has just ensured that Nigeria's young generation are pushed towards the dark ages of illiteracy and subsequent unemployment and poverty.
3. The world governments, AU, EU and the government of Nigeria are still scratching their head as to what to in the face of such brutal, inhuman and scruple-less act of Boko Haram - as though the world has not seen enough to decide swift and decisive action. Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Liberia and Cambodia actually are history and we have a penchant for reading history only from our arm chairs.
4. As the world keeps twiddling its fingers, Boko Haram continues to get its arms supplies and financial back up from unknown sources. Dozens of arms manufacturers around the world and illegal financiers are minting their money. Few hundred more girls being added to the thousands of already vandalised-and-sold-into-prostitution women do not make any difference to them. Nor do they make any difference to those countries that facilitate exporting of those arms or are the conduits for the black money.
At the end of it all, we can be rest assured that ten-twenty years hence there would be an international tribunal for Nigeria and leaders of Boko Haram (who may well be on their natural way to their graves) would be sentenced to 150 years in prison. Countries would contribute monies to hold the tribunal and subsequently house the imprisoned. Lawyers on either side would also have earned their due out of the legal process. A jubilant world will observe that the end of international justice has been served well and that now there are more immutable precedences for offences against women during hostile conditions. Everyone will be happy.
In the mean time, the girls abducted by Boko Haram would have begotten their children out of their captivity with Boko Haram. Growing up in a country that fears to send its children to school and finding that their poverty is so oppressing, they may fall prey to taking up arms. They may perpetuate what Boko Haram has as yet left undone.
The Nigerian Nightmare....Hello world...anyone listening? How about doing something to stop the nightmare turning into reality?
PS: Looks like I must start writing scripts for movies. It might help me to get money to buy history books and an arm chair.
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