Nigeria, my country. "Oh, how I love thee." I will always express this love I have for you, though often I think about the greener pastures that are outside compared to the one I have here "in you." The roads outside look bright and a lot greener. I've seen and heard of stories how people will say, "Nothing good can come out of you." Well, I don't believe that; deep down inside of me, I know Nigeria will one day become that nation that I've envisioned in my head (just one day).
Recently, I heard people saying that history shouldn't be studied in schools as a course on its own. The reason is that history can be found anywhere, and there is no point in teaching it as a subject in school. Back then, in senior secondary school, I loved history; I felt like it was one of the few subjects that didn't need someone to be cracking my brain; it was just easy because it had to do with the past experiences of my nation.
Without the past, I don't think there would be a present, and without the present, there would be no future. One has to come for the other to follow suit. One little history I wanna share today is about "The Chibok Girls". Chibok is a town in Borno State, Nigeria; now, the term "girls" was obtained from the government girls' secondary school. So on April 14, 2014, on the night of that date above, the Boko Haram invaded the Government girl's secondary school and kidnapped 276 students, and most of these students were Christians schooling in the north.
These students were in the range of 17-18 years; in 2014, I was still in the secondary school system. So when I heard the story I became scared despite my state of origin being safe at the moment. Even at that, I imagined how the parents of those girls would feel and what they'd be going through every day that passed.
Whenever I came back from school and met my siblings, listening to the news, I would stand behind the curtain so no one would notice, just get an update on the girl's abduction and what the federal government was doing about the whole situation. I know the Nigerian Government ramped up efforts to ensure the release of the Chibok girls. At those moments, different stories were being developed, and I didn't know which particular one to believe.
As time passed, a story was told that some of the Chibok girls escaped captivity on their own while being escorted to the domain of the Boko Haram while others were released following the intense camping effort by civil society organizations and negotiation by the Federal Government. Rumor still had it that 82 girls are still in captivity.
This is one little history I will never forget because those moments built a little fear inside of me; going to school became kind of scary because often I would imagine my school being attacked by these so-called terrorists "but I'm glad it remained an imagination till this day."
Thanks for reading 🧡