SOS FROM UNIMAID STUDENTS: ‘Please, don’t let Chibok girls’ fate befall us’

As a new student, you just arrived University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) and you have a place to lay your tired head. You should expect some relief! At least, finally, you made it; you’ve arrived! But the following day as you are at Mama Aisha Restaurant doing some ‘tanking up,’ before you could swallow your third morsel of eba garnished with egusi soup you heard b-o-o-m. What’s that, man? Your mind immediately begins to wonder so much that you can’t swallow the next morsel you hold in your hand. You pay the bill, pack your things, ready to run in case you have to do so. This kind of experience keeps happening almost on daily basis.

During the day, friends spread rumours about Boko Haram activities and their threat to attack the university. Now you live in total fear and cannot concentrate on your studies. Surprisingly, the lecturers are indifferent and the standard of questioning and assessment has not changed.
Well, reader, this is a fragment of the big picture of the life of a typical student at the UNIMAID. You don’t want to picture yourself studying under such conditions. The Boko Haram insurgency and the rumours engendered by the general sense of insecurity informed by the frequent attacks on innocent citizens going about their businesses have succeeded in foisting upon the students, old and new, a climate of fear. But the fear is more palpable among off-campus students who live within the general populace. They feel the insecurity more.
For new students who traveled all the way from other states and who had never experienced the tension that Boko Haram attacks generate in Maiduguri, the pressure starts right from home where they are told tales of horror: that the roads leading to the university are deadlier than the city itself; that the insurgents will possibly waylay them on the way and butcher them; that they will possibly end up spending the night in some forest away from the university campus. Those are the kinds of things people out there say..post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com
If eventually they are brave enough to board a vehicle and embark on the journey, they are nearly forced to turn back because of the many checkpoints that dot the city. This results in long queues in which one may have to wait for hours before one is waved on. Jeez! So, tiring and tiresome!
Yagana Mohammed, a 200 level student of Department of History who lives off-campus said coping with the feeling of insecurity in Maiduguri city is something else due to the general mistrust that exists, from drivers to passengers and vice versa, because no one knows who the suicide bomber might turn out to be. “While going for lectures male and female students are subjected to thorough search by male security men,” he said. “Secondly, we are not allowed to go into the campus with our bags and cars, thereby making us to carry heavy textbooks in our hands everywhere we go within and around the campus.”
Musa Yahaya, 300 level student of Mass Communication who lost his parents in the crisis confessed that he lives continually under fear resulting from the daily stories of attacks on the highway. “It’s really hard to bear”, he told Expdonaloaded blog, “but life must go on. Let me just say we are in God’s hand. My only consolation is that we can see some improvement in the security situation given the recent success of the Nigerian soldiers’ operations against the insurgents. They seem to be making some headway in curbing the menace posed by the insurgents by recapturing some towns and villages, in collaboration with the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF).”
Mary Harami, a 200 level student of English Language said she would never forget one fateful Friday while she was on her way home, after lectures. Along Baga road, a KEKENAPEP overtook them and she discovered in it were a driver and a nursing mother. “The driver was really speeding. When I looked ahead of me I saw a traffic jam, a heavy one, and I began to wonder why the driver was speeding. But the moment the KEKENAPEP got into the traffic jam, there was an earth-shaking explosion that its impact blew its roof away and mangled the body beyond recognition. Everyone began to run and scampered away into safety. Cars collided with one another in their bid to get away in the midst of the confusion that followed. The sound was so deafening that it temporarily affected my eardrum. It took me days before I could begin to hear clearly again what people around me are saying but I thank God for surviving the incident.”
But as with the off-campus students, so with the students who live on the campus. One of them, Sana Mohammed, 400 level student of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, said: “I don’t go out to study in class any longer because I am tired of running back to the hostel bare-footed each time I heard those boom-boom sounds. Seriously, it’s not funny; whenever I hear sounds of hand grenades, machine guns or armoured tanks and rocket launchers I find it difficult to sleep or to concentrate on my studies.
“It’s high time the government realized that our lives are in danger. It is true that the Nigerian Army is making headway in curbing the activities of the insurgents but I hope it is not all politics. I just hope things will not roll back to their original positions now that the elections have ended. I hope the relative peace enjoyed so far will be permanent. This is not an attempt to vilify anyone – just trying to let the government know that the fate that befell the Chibok girls should not be allowed to befall us over here. As it is, we are all scared; we need lasting peace and some stern assurances. Reopening the international airport in Maiduguri that has been closed for many months now will not be a bad idea to start with, all things being equal.”