Tag Archives: Hopelessness

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 ©