Thus followed the term headlessness, as in running around chicken-like in crazy circles. The term can also be extrapolated to cover more recent events, as in brainless behavior, indeed seditious nay treasonous activity, fuelled by say, brain damaged conditions in a spouse.
Or, heedless as well as headless, as in just simply lacking a federal centre of authority, a gavel calling for order, a desk for the buck to stop at.
Jonathan is president today because Nigerians said bring the vice president back; let him take his constituted position since the president is unable to function due to illness.
Headless also means an absence of reason, the nonexistence of an anchor for morality. Religiosity as can plainly be seen, needs no such framework to shape its ardour. Killing, abducting and beheading in the name of faith is the fashion these days, as is non-action in the face criminal behavior.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s supporters, over whom he has apparently no control, hit on a new campaign slogan. Bring back Jonathan the banners read. The lack of originality is not the issue, remember, there is no thinking going on here, and copying is not generally a problem if you acknowledge authorship and are doing it for the right reasons.
Makes you wonder a bit though: the people who want to distance their champion from any responsibility for finding the bulk of the school girls abducted by Boko Haram, use the slogan that is the tagline for keeping their situation in the lime light. Headlessness made real.
Used to be, the term depraved indifference had boundaries one could discern. The words defined a callous disregard for the suffering of others, an absence of fellow feeling that implied a lack of that human element that made you a person like others (I am because you are.) So much so, that such behavior constituted a crime in a society based on standards that extolled equality and freedom.
Today, five months and counting where do we draw the line between Bring back our girls and Bring back Jonathan?
Is it to say that if we want to bring back Jonathan we must also bring back our girls?
Is it to say that if Jonathan does not bring back our girls then he should just keep walking?
Is it to say that since Jonathan has shown himself to be so intent on bringing back our girls we should do the same in his case?
Or is it to say: “Oga Jonathan, mek you no worry. As you don bring our girls back we too, we go bring you back! Exercise your patient. Mek you jus siddon de look, as we too, we dey look you!”
Five months gone and the only picture we have is that of a group of girls all clad in identical veils and sitting expressionless on the ground, their framed faces looking as it seems into our eyes, asking not to be forgotten.
In our hearts, we hope that is how we will find them seated and waiting, but we know that it cannot be so. If they do ever see a newspaper, be it a scrap littering a street somewhere will they not think, ‘we have been forgotten; they no longer care about us; our president has moved on to things that matter more to him.
‘And if he should succeed and win reelection then our fate will truly be sealed, because if he does not care now, how will he care then? ‘
This Summer I saw my youngest daughter into college, shared experiences with fellow parents, rejoiced in a goal achieved, was thankful that my children are where they should be preparing to take their place in the world as adults. I was grateful that they had done what we, as parents, had asked of them and was ready for the challenge of making sure their needs were met. I remembered that the girls of Chibok, just like my girls, were at the threshold of a new stage in their lives before they were most cruelly herded away into darkness.
In New York in August, I was stopped, most courteously by young members of an organisation that cared for lost girls, victims of abuse, trafficking and homelessness. They were raising money, canvassing passers by to donate what ever they could and handing out leaflets about their work. One of them was a young Nigerian.
I explained to the young African American man who stopped me that we have similar problems in Nigeria. Oh he knew all about the Chibok girls. His organisation had joined the rally to Bring back our Girls, four months ago when President Jonathan was the last person to know and Mrs. Jonathan thought the whole saga was a ruse to thwart her progress anddabaru her husband’s right to a second term as president of Nigeria.
This matter of the girls, who remain in captivity, will not go away. It will not sink into oblivion. It cannot cease to be important. There is no way to forget the children who have been taken from you. Unless you really are not human.
What has happened to the Chibok girls is a watershed in the story of Nigeria; it is a stain on our character.
That our children can disappear is not it. There are new trouble spots emerging in this world every day. There are levels of barbarism that send cold chills down your spine, that make you question if human beings are actually superior to animals or if it is really the other way round.
There is a bad smell emanating from Nigeria. And what absolutely stinks here is the attitude of those at the helm of affairs to saving the lives of those poor girls.
To quote Tolu Ogunlesi five months ago, shortly after the story of the abduction broke: it is not whether the Nigerian government will find them: the question is, are they even looking for them?
We need to be assured that they are.
Ms. Amma Ogan, veteran newspaper woman and editor, is the 2013 recipient of the Wole Soyinka Media Centre award for lifetime contribution to journalism.
Source: Premiumtimes
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