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opinion

Obiageli (Oby) Ezekwesili is a former vice-president of the World Bank, a co-founder of Transparency International and co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign

Do you remember those 219 school girls of rural Chibok community in Northern Nigeria who were abducted by Boko Haram terrorists exactly two years ago, on April 14, 2014? Well, they are still not back. Not even one of them has been rescued since we all cried out for help. You may have occasionally read of the rescue of hundreds of women from former enclaves of terrorists in Nigeria, but they were not the #ChibokGirls. These were other girls and women who we were never told had been missing, and who may never have been rescued if not for the pressure mounted for the rescue of Chibok schoolgirls.

It was ironic that children who were violently separated from their families ultimately helped create a massive global family on social media that demanded justice.

Strangers across neighbourhoods, cities and countries suddenly became part of a large global community that called the missing school children "OUR girls." It was not hyperbole: Most of them saw in the hastag #ChibokGirls images of their own daughters, sisters, cousins or friends. Such resonance is what moved many around the world to convey that they cared.

Sadly, neither the government of Nigeria nor the rest of the world that loudly helped echo the agonizing chant, #BringBackOurGirls, has done what it called for in the spring of 2014.

Two years ago, #BringBackOurGirls resounded through valleys and across seas to homes, offices, cities and nations as our world joined together to demand their rescue. Citizens and political leaders were riveted by the tragic story of young women who were kidnapped from their school compound just before writing their final high school exams. Some would by now be in their second year of university, technical or entrepreneurship education that would improve the opportunities for their extremely poor families. After all, education remains the best tool for increasing social and economic mobility for individuals and societies, an idea that has flourished since the age of Adam Smith. For the girls and people of Chibok, however, that dream has so far been cut short.

Beyond the advocacy, getting the girls out of the grips of terrorists requires prioritized, sophisticated and sustained rescue operations of the kind that only governments can provide. And that is where we failed them, because despite that flurry of chants and protests, the reality is that the arduous work of actually locating and rescuing the girls has failed. How can a world which spends a substantial amount of money promoting childhood education for girls not be concerned about the signal that's sent by this failure to rescue these models of courageous pursuit of knowledge? How can we all simply move on from this unresolved tragedy? Do we not see the contradiction and moral crisis that it creates for children when leaders with the duty to help are not persistent in focusing on issues that matter to the younger generation? How can we continue to ask more girls in Northern Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria or Afghanistan to go to school despite the odds of an attack on their lives by forces of ignorance?

The previous government of Nigeria mismanaged the rescue plan for the schoolgirls from the start. Political considerations blinded it to the fact that the primary responsibility of any government is to secure the safety of its citizens. In the early days after the abduction, it chose to ignore, deny, doubt and be cynical about the abduction. Weeks after the abduction, it was finally compelled to act by the strident, universal echoes of #BringBackOurGirls. Even then, its response was extremely slow and tentative. Realizing the challenge ahead, countries with good anti-terrorism capabilities such as Canada, United States, Britain and France offered help and sent military, security and intelligence teams to help locate and rescue the girls. But the Nigerian government and its military were visibly unco-operative hosts at that time. In hindsight, I suppose we shouldn't have been so surprised, since a senior minister in a Western government later stated that "dealing with your government on the rescue of the girls was the single most frustrating, unsatisfactory and disappointing thing I have ever done in my life."

However, our hopes were raised last May when the government that had failed our girls was voted out of office. Two months after President Muhammadu Buhari took office, the girls' parents left a meeting with him brimming with optimism. The president convincingly assured them that he would rescue their daughters. They felt comforted by his words, which were more about actions that his government would take than on the failures of the previous one. But on Dec. 29, Mr. Buhari announced that the government "lacks credible intelligence on the whereabouts of the girls." For parents, the community and their sympathizers, those words were a terrible blow to the absolute confidence and great expectation that they had placed on the assurances given by the president barely seven months before.

Despite this terrible setback, the parents and our movement pressed on, remembering that ChibokGirls do not only belong to Nigeria. OUR girls are global citizens. Even if their government fails them, the world ought not to do the same. There is no way, we can accept the excuse of "lack of credible intelligence" in a profoundly integrated world that recognizes the victory of terrorists in one region as a potential victory in several others.

The intelligence assets of the world must now be reactivated for our ChibokGirls.

Our ChibokGirls chose knowledge, believing in the benefits that learning promised for them and their families. They must not be abandoned by a world that seems to have quickly moved on after raising a sign of sympathy and hope for them. It would be a terrible way to encourage the tens of millions of other girls who we must get into schools all over the world in order to maximize the productivity of the world's population through gender equality. Those brave 219 girls are models in courage who ignored the dangers of going to school in a terrorist-occupied region. How could such bravery not stir and sustain a stronger depth of commitment by all the powerful leaders and countries of the world with both the power and capacity to gather intelligence and secure their rescue?

Our belief that ChibokGirls can still be rescued is anchored on unfailing hope. We cannot allow them to continue to be in captivity. We must now do everything it takes to secure their freedom and bring them home. That responsibility to act belongs to our country, Nigeria, but also to countries such as Canada, the U.S., Britain and France which once showed up to help rescue our girls. It is time to return, and to bring back our girls. Our girls are our collective future.

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