You know, the more we hear about the uselessness of the Nigerian government in dealing with the abduction – the rape, in the original sense of the word – by Boko Haram of 230-odd schoolgirls, the less appealing that government appears. The most striking and urgent action it took in response to the crisis in the three weeks since it happened was yesterday to arrest Naomi Mutah Nyadar, one of the women behind the mass demonstrations calling on the unhappily named president, Goodluck Jonathan, to get a grip and do something. Apparently his wife Patience took against her because she spoke about rescuing “our daughters” when in fact she was not the mother of any of the victims; she was speaking metaphorically, you see. Mrs Jonathan views the whole thing as a damaging distraction from her husband’s re-election campaign, apparently.
If it weren’t so horrible in itself, this flagrant outrage by Boko Haram – whose leader helpfully explained that the reason the girls were kidnapped was because they had no business being at school; they should have been married by now – would serve as a useful illustration of the general corruption and incompetence of the Nigerian government: like government, like army.
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