[wanabidii] Africans still Children of a lesser God- where are our Nigerian girls

Africans still Children of a lesser God- where are our Nigerian girls

 

I first came across the story of the 100 abducted girls in Nigeria on a link posted by a friend on Facebook. I shed a tear imagining the fate of these girls, but worst if security efforts by government would bring them back home alive. 

These are merely 100 African girls, no different from the hundreds and thousands of women who faced the same fate in Congo, Sierra Leone etc. It seems as if there is a tacit normality about African women and children being abducted in conflicts and subjected to horrendous abuse in abductors' camps. 

The story has taken the form of another unfortunate tragedy of conflict on the African continent; but not tragic enough for consistent media coverage and outcries across the globe. 

I visited the AU website to see if there was any statement condemning this act and echoing the need to strengthen search efforts. I was out of luck. What I found baffling was the Nigerian's government assurance that all heads of States who are expected for the World Economic Forum between the 7th and the 9th of May had nothing to worry about.

 

Yet when asked on the return of the girls, it was emphasised that these jungles were not safe and very difficult to search. It was heart throbbing to see fathers also joining the search for their children; mortified at the thought of finding their girls dead in the jungle.

 

I wondered if these were 100 American girls or European girls captured in the forests, how this would have trended worldwide, the efforts and resources that would have been deployed to find them.

This really asserts the insignificance of the life of an African. Who takes care of us, who cares about the African child? A child forced into conflicts, a child forced to kill his family, forced to be a woman whilst still a child, a child who still brutally understands slavery forced to work in fatal mines feeding the greedy...

 

 For how long must this be the norm? For how long must lives of many African children and women on this continent are equated or lesser than that of an animal?  Will the kids be just another statistic of conflict? Will their lives ever be the same? Who compensates for such atrocities? Who remembers the woman brutally raped and physically and emotionally damaged after conflicts?  Apart from being welfare cases which can be paraded on documentaries by the likes of the BBC, how much have we invested in protecting women and children of this continent?   

 

When Africans kill each other in conflicts it's another mere barbarian act. When business is affected it's an issue of international importance. Ironically, the world was up in arms when Uganda passed a law against gay communities. Media paid significant attention to this story to an extent that internationally acclaimed business men and figures threatened sanction and withdrawing business.  Yet here are 100 girls who are being passed on as just another African matter.

In our own backyard South Africa, a story of a love tragedy has been given more attention than a commission involving the death of mining workers. A story of the longest mining strikes in the platinum sector barely made the front page.  The mine workers who lost lives in Marikana have been treated as trivial as they were when they were alive sweating to dig mineral for self- serving capitalists.  

 

The story about a sports figure killing his girlfriend has seen journalists around the world flock to our country, a channel dedicated to the trial and analysts become relevant on twitter on much anticipated outcomes. This is the reality, race and class does indeed play a prominent figure on which story matters around the world  

With every hour, minute delayed to find these girls; they endure a day longer in a state of pain agony and maybe prolonged torture and abuse.

We are indeed children of a lesser God!

@MsNdima

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Gugu Ndima
+27 76 783 1516

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