This lead to activists creating the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls - which many think echoes a statement on the abducted girls made by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka after the news of the kidnap aired – with the intention of getting the girls home.
Then, and sadly, a campaign seeking to sell the candidature of the Nigerian president under whose watch the girls, who are still missing, were kidnapped ripped off the advocacy hashtag with their own #BringBackGoodluck2015.
Bringbackgoodluck
The new hashtag was considered insensitive and an example of the hallmark of the acute disconnect from reality that many Nigerians accuse some supporters of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of wearing like a garment. But initial domestic social media fury about the hash tag #BringBackJonathan2015 was not enough to get those responsible to pull the campaign.
Some are of the opinion that it probably took an article on Washington Post to get the President to do the right thing.
As it stands, many people are happy with the announcement by Reuben Abati, the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, that the president has ordered the banners bearing the hashtag removed from the streets. But it’s sad that it took a negative report in Washington Post to get what any sensitive person would have seen from the start: that the hash tag reads like an insult to not just those campaigning for the missing girls, but all the girls and their grieving families.