It is back to the nightmare of imagining female students in the custody of insurgents of the Boko Haram. One would have thought that Boko Haram would never succeed in that strategy again after Chibok in 2014. That is not so anymore. There is now Dapchi in Yobe State coming on the heels of a very forceful pronouncement of the decapitation of Boko Haram and of its leader being on the run in disguise.
It is the same set of questions: why did no security agencies anticipate this? Could it have been anticipated but someone did not act? Why was there no shoot out in the school involving troops and the insurgents? And why has there been no high profile hot pursuit? It remains strange for non-military minds to imagine a convoy of buses or any sort of vehicles carrying away 105 girls without being stopped at any point and some scuffle ensuring.
Of course, to ask some of these questions is to expose one’s naivety about the nature and quality of training of Boko Haram commanders in the war of the militarily weak against the militarily strong army. But, even then, everything about this particular incidence leaves one completely perplexed.
It leaves one hoping that those with the most direct responsibility to respond to this sort of a challenge are coming up with something re-assuring to Nigeria. For, it is not just the girls but Nigeria itself that is in captivity. This is the much that can be said at the moment when most media houses are still in the editorial dilemma thrown up by developments such as this: report the spectacular success of the insurgents and grant them the sort of publicity they love or decline to report it and contribute to a false sense of security. May God continue to bless Nigeria!
