The Malala odyssey and our listening president (2)

Rising from a meeting with the teenage activist Mr President, perhaps feeling more energised to face the grief-stricken parents, agreed it was time to do the needful – the needful he previously dismissed as irrelevant. When he travelled to France to attend a meeting, which actually did more to truncate negotiators’ effort that would have resulted in the recovery of the girls, and reporters asked him why he was yet to visit Chibok, His Excellency was quick to counter the question by saying visiting Chibok would not bring back the girls.
Agreed that visiting Chibok would not bring back the girls, but has his visit to France brought back any of the girls? It was while he was attending the summit that, maybe seeing that world powers like France, the US, Britain, China and Israel etc had agreed to support the search, he called home to call off the ‘negotiation with terrorists’.

He probably felt, like many of us childishly assume, that America or any of the superpowers only needed to wave a magic wand and the girls would be home again, hale and hearty and life would be nicer ever after. A big joke! Abukakar Shekau has, so far, left no one in doubt that he is a chronic psychopath who thrives in people’s sorrow and even dramatises his relish in video recordings. But we keep playing into his and his sect’s hands.

I don’t know where the president drew his wisdom of not negotiating with terrorists from because the countries he looks up to did cave in to ‘terrorist’ demands in the past to allow for peace to reign. The UK did negotiate with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which had carried out series of bombings in cities in England and Northern Ireland from the 1960s up until the Good Friday agreement in 1998. The US recently struck a deal with the Taliban culminating in the release of Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban leaders held in Guantanamo Bay. To secure the release of a French family of seven last year Boko Haram allegedly got £2 million from France (not necessarily the French government though).

So why is the Chibok Girls’ case different? Why did President Jonathan remain in perpetual denial of the abduction until Malala insisted on a meeting between him and the girls’ families? Why did calls on the president to visit Chibok or at the very least speak with the parents fall on deaf ears until Malala stepped in? If there were no missing girls, as the president had been misled into believing, who were the parents he eventually met with?
Finally, did his meeting with the parents bring back the girls? No. But does he not feel much happier and more competent and more at peace with himself now that he met the parents, heard their cries and even, probably, promised to ensure their daughters come back safely even if he never would be able to achieve that?

Our listening president needs to listen more to voices of reason, beyond the barriers imposed by ‘trusted advisers’. He is the president and needs to act fully like one, a leader to all not just a handful of hangers on; a president that would need not wait for a teenager’s reprimand to do the right thing.