Tag Archives: Chibok Kidnapping

Reflect Nigeria – Chibok Horror Compounded by Dapchi Terror!

Amid the darkness of the gloom

Nothing but despair abounds

In the wilderness of the arid

Drought of feigned existence,

Where no hope subsists,

Do the Chibok and now Dapchi girls find

The extreme disillusionment

Of persistent hopelessness,

That more time evading and counting

All hope, has but evaporated into

The disintegrating dust of time,

To where existence is meaningless,

And has the ironical value of the unrelenting

Real and abiding grief of total bondage and servitude.

Will nobody aid them still…

YemilBenjoy ©

Updated March 11, 2018

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Reflect Nigeria – Vacant Noise

The hollow platitude by the government about how
Malevolent the abduction of the Chibox girls was …
Is yet but a meaningless mirage of feigned solace
To the girls in the clutches of utmost despair, their hopes
Their families, the nation and the world, and
Wretchedly cause more consternation and anguish.
Without a doubt, the issues of import are thus,
What has been done by those who proclaim they govern
And what will be done forthwith by the Nigerian government
To return to their communities, prior lives and innocence
The young girls kidnapped from within their school and country.

Alas, the national query about the safe passage of the girls
Back to their abodes in safety, must incessantly without pause,
In loud and unyielding refrain, drown out the puerile
Statements that advance, neither cause nor even weary hope,
That our girls will be returned home without further delay.

As the adage goes – talk is cheap!
Tell us something new, show us progress and bring back our girls.

YemilBenjoy ©
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Reflect Nigeria Tragic Fiction 5 – Prayer Of An Abducted Chibok And Now Dapchi Girl

I am weary of this horrendous and feigned existence that I am forced to live
And seek complete deliverance, like some of my comrades in chains before me,
Fortunate to be relieved eternally, from the atrocities of oppression that are
Conjoined with the degradation and unveiled brutality of sexual bondage,
Into the embrace of death, from this unbearable agony that ceases not.
For I understand, that it is a transition through redemption, to eternal peace.
Which is what I seek, like some of us, who have since had the tragic fortune
To escape, from this realm, like birds from the captor’s grip, but forever free.
That respite, is what I urgently need from the endless lashing of the torture,
From the shackles of despair, as all innocence is lost from these forsaken woods
Where neither normalcy nor joy nor hope abound, and evil reigns supreme.
I said my prayers silently, the prayers of my own faith, to remove me swiftly
And instantly, from this place, and for this, I now without patience await.

YemilBenjoy ©

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Reflect Nigeria – Tragic Fiction (4) Thunderous Silence

Although this is a fictional narrative, sadly it is to convey what an abducted girl in captivity may write:

Thunderous is the silence of inactivity in the country concerning the continued situation of the hundreds of girls abducted from their school in Nigeria.

Mr. President:

How was your breakfast today? How was the comfort of your tranquil bed last night? Well, I have not eaten anything in two days, neither have I slept in my dormitory bed or enjoyed the comfort of my family home in 10 weeks. What a tragedy! Let me remind you, in case you have forgotten, that I have been in the stranglehold of captivity since I was abducted between the hours of April 14 and April 15, 2014, from my school in Chibok, Nigeria as I slept in my dormitory dreaming about my future. A future that I hoped would somehow only be limited by the dimensions of my innate potential. However, I was not allowed to pursue that promise because of the ineptitude of my government; due to the failure to protect vulnerable school girls and the failure to rescue us. What a pity!

Again, lest you have forgotten, let me remind you of the horror that has befallen the daughters of the country you took an oath to protect. Or do you somehow pray that we will become shadows of the night blended with oblivion and erased from the remembrance of the nation and the world. Although, we may have been relegated to the recesses of existence, by the inexcusable failure of your government to adequately protect our school and the unconscionable failure thereafter to effect our immediate liberation, the undeniable fact is that we are Nigerian girls who were violently snatched from the pursuit of our lives, a right, inalienable, and bequeathed to every human being. Lest none forget us, one of our collective prayers in incarceration is that history etch our names indelibly in blood in the chronicles of the mind and time so that our names and faces will never be erased from the collective memory of the nation, and world.

How tragic the unbridled grief of our families from whom solace stands ever fickle and aloof in the debris of shattered hope. What exactly do you think has been our fate? Do you somehow believe that we have not been beaten, gang raped repeatedly, degraded incessantly and humiliated beyond description? Or do you choose to ignore the reality of our situation. The stark reality is that the depth of the depravity we have been subjected to by evil during the day and at night is unimaginable. As the horrific moments turned into horrendous days and now those days into the dreadful months, all figment of hope has dissipated into smithereens. We languish in the midst of despair and mourn the death of our dreams and the abrupt cessation of our youth. Should your government not be leading the campaign to rescue us from this vortex of fear? Rather, instead of determined valour, in its stead lies crippled the skeletal and desiccated remains of apathy. Alas, dead and still, lie any mirage of the vacuous platitudes to extricate us from this quagmire. Have you even declared a day of mourning for us? For we hear the stories of you dancing at parties and boarding jets beyond the boundaries of the nation as we suffocate in this cesspit. What a calamity! Woe betide and cursed be the night of April 14 through April 15, 2014, in the history books of Nigeria. Let it stand in infamy in the history of our country as mothers rend their garments and fathers gnash their teeth.

I hear the boots of oppression approaching … so I must stop again.

Fictional story to be continued.

YemilBenjoy ©

 

 

 

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Reflect Nigeria – Tragic Fiction (3)

Although this is a fictional narrative, sadly it is to convey what an abducted girl in captivity may write:

Mr. President,

I return to writing under the threat of bodily harm but I must continue because I do not want you or the world to forget us in the dreadful alleys of time. Have you forgotten us? Or do you hope that with time we will simply fade deep into the recesses of the mind, conveniently never to be remembered. I will continue to write so that you never forget that we were abducted from our school in Chibok and now Dapchi, Nigeria.

The news we heard today was of calamitous proportions. A  12 year-old girl is pregnant. My heart stopped when I heard the news. It was a confounding situation, not for lack of understanding the process that led to this perplexing state of affairs, but completely destabilizing because of the protracted cruelty of evil. How could this be? I prayed that it would not be true. I prayed for myself and prayed for my sister that this would not be our fate. The thought was unbearable. How could childhood be violently interrupted with forced motherhood? How could innocence be violated with no consequences? All because we pursued the dream of advancement through education and our government failed to protect us from foreseeable acts of the malevolent. Alas, it failed to protect the hallowed ground of every child, our school.

Now the shores of hope remain distant, even the mirage of a gallant rescue that we used to cling to has dissipated into nothingness like the barren forest we are held captive in, barren of love, barren of parents, barren of childhood, barren of dreams and barren of life. What a tragedy. Frightening minutes have turned into awful days and into forsaken weeks. Have you even thought about us recently? Do you weep for us? If I were your daughter, would I still be here? Again, I ask have you spoken to our parents. We heard that a security risk may have prevented you from going to Chibok and now Dapchi. What an irony. Yet, we have been condemned by the government’s failure to rescue us to lives in tatters where there is no promise or protection.

Will my life be a continuum of threats, assaults, degradation and fear? Or will it be plagued constantly with the screaming of another captive beaten to death because she had the audacity to fight for her life. There is no refuge in this place. The days are filled with despair and the nights with dread and the silent weeping under the yoke of tyranny. Do we cry in vain? Hear our cries and save us.

I hate to but I must stop again.

Fictional story to be continued.

YemilBenjoy ©

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