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Abstract
This paper is concerned with two questions: What are the master frames of the #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG) movement? Why did the #BBOG attract significant global attention but achieve only moderate success in its goal – the release of all the school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Chibok in April 2014? The paper draws on primary and secondary data to argue that the international attention generated by #BBOG framing had historically specific resonance with local contestations for political power. The reverberation of the framing led to the alienation of key political actors in Nigeria who could have helped achieve the movement’s objective. The involvement of elite women in the movement played a major role in its global popularity but their political activities and loyalties before and during movement activities influenced local perceptions of the movement. The #BBOG’s rhetorical over-reliance on international support for achieving the movement’s objective was a strategic error. The #BBOG experience suggests the need for activists, particularly in the developing world, to recognise the constraints of their political context, work with local actors to achieve objectives, and publicise what ‘international support’ means for movement objectives.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The daughter of a revered Nigerian historian, Bala Usman.
2 Interviewee 30: female member of the #BringBackOurGirls Strategic Team, personal interview, Abuja, July 2015.
3 Multiple interviewees.
4 Interviewee 33: male #BBOG SCT member, personal interview, Abuja, July 2017.
5 Interviewee 33.
6 Interviewee 30. This view is widely shared by participants.
7 Interviewee 12.
8 Interviewee 01: male #BBOG member and leader within KADA, personal interview, Abuja, 2015.
9 #BBOG publicity material # 1.
10 #BBOG publicity material # 1.
11 Interviewee 30.
12 Interviews 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, among others. Activists had assumed the movement would exist for only a few days or a few weeks.
13 See “The ABC of our demands,” available at http://www.bringbackourgirls.ng/downloads/ (accessed 16 March 2016).
14 Ibid.
15 Interviewee 30: female member of the #BBOG Strategic Team, personal interview, Abuja.
16 Interviewees 12, 30, and many others.
17 Interviewees 12, 30, and many others.
18 Interviewee 04: Army General; personal interview, Defence Headquarters, Abuja 2015.
19 Interviewee 04: Defence Headquarters, Abuja, July 2015.
20 Interviewee 04, July.
21 Interviewee 01.
22 Interviewee 04, July.
23 Interviewee 30. There were also members who felt that #BBOG was too soft and needed to be tougher in its approach.
24 Interviewee 30.
25 Interviewee 04, July.
26 Interviewee 32, personal interview, Abuja, May 2016.
27 Interviewee 30. Usman had previously worked with the Governor of Kaduna.
28 #BBOG internal document # 2.
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Temitope B. Oriola
Temitope B. Oriola is joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal African Security and an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. A recipient of the Governor General of Canada Academic Gold Medal (first awarded in 1873), Oriola’s book Criminal Resistance? The Politics of Kidnapping Oil Workers is one of a small number of book-length sociological investigations of political kidnapping in the English language. Oriola is president of the Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS).