Kevin TOW #24 - What’s Worse Than a Girl Being Kidnapped?- ADAOBI TRICIA NWAUBANI

Two years ago, more than 200 girls were kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok by Boko Haram. A few dozen have since escaped, but a vast majority remain prisoners of the Islamist insurgents. Chibok is a Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria, located in the south of the state. The kidnappings of the more than 200 girls in Chibok made global news a couple years ago, shocking the world. In an article, written by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, giving accounts of the interviews she held with families of the kidnapped girls, it was apparent that the road to getting their girls back was a lengthy and complicated one, as the problems are not limited to the missing girls.

The people in Chibok, are plagued with a hopeless mindset as a result of the abysmal living conditions in the region as Nwaubani states “What I was not prepared for was the realization that what had seemed, from the outside, like one of the greatest horrors to befall a people appeared from the inside as just another great misfortune in a land where tragedy is an everyday occurrence,” (2). These are people in the forgotten backyard of the country.  At 76.3 percent, that region has an astoundingly high poverty rate. At 109 deaths per 1,000 births, it has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. The literacy rate of men is 18.1 percent and that of women is 15.4 percent — again, by far the worst in the country. (12) The people of Chibok want their girls back, however they are faced with an insurmountable amount of poverty among other issues. Many families of the region have as many children as possible to account for the high mortality rates. With these issues in mind the notion of tragedy being an everyday occurrence reigns supreme. It is not that the people of Chibok do not care for their missing daughters, the people, living amongst monumental poverty and illiteracy, have sadly grown numb to the tragedies that occur daily.

Organizations like Bring Back Our Girls did a lot of good by making people care about the girls’ plights, however little light has been shed on the many other problems of the community. The region must overcome its day to day tragedies, overcoming the numbness that comes with these tragedies. Overcoming the poverty would mean less worry about infant mortality rates, less worry about whether their children will survive, and result in a better situation for the people of Chibok and the kidnapped girls. “Without a doubt, the abducted girls need to be rescued. But deliverance is equally needed for all the people of northeast Nigeria, a region where death has cast its long shadow.” (13)