The Chibok Girls’ Spirit Haunts the Nigerian Parliament and Marks President Jonathan’s 57th Birthday

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It was an unusual day in our nation as Tambuwal 's speakership and Jonathan's presidency were marked with an unusual twist in a way that we have never seen before.

If truth be told, the speaker's and the president's positions respectively are the most powerful roles in the nation, and the current occupiers in these positions, acting on their darkest impulses, are at each other's neck.

We will never know if the psychological and spiritual effects of the still missing Chibok Girls' spirit is causing unusual reactions in the polity of the nation, but what is clear is that the collective mind and spirit of these innocent girls wherever they may be, dead or alive, could be having their surrounding effects on the Presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the nation, in a way that the people have never before witnessed.

On the day when President Goodluck Jonathan was cutting his 57th birthday cake at the Presidential lodge, the National Assembly was in chaos as police tear gassed the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, within the lobby of parliament. Legislative members who were with the speaker and were likewise being blocked from entering the National Assembly, in a state of anger, some of them fought their way into the Parliament's complex by climbing over the fence.

Tambuwal, who recently defected from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) opposition party, is now a full blown threat to Jonathan.

Today's trouble is a sign of the breakdown of law and order which could become much more massive and last into the coming weeks and months.

Recently the U.S. President Obama told the world that he wakes up thinking of the Nigerian schoolgirls and wishes he “could reach out and save those kids.”

While the President of the United States is in grief over the current state of the girls, the President of Nigeria and Speaker of the Parliament are caught up in the conflict over levels of power.

As we all know, 200-plus girls were kidnapped on April 14 by Boko Haram rebels. All efforts by the government to rescue them from captivity have proven to be ineffective, and remain so to this day.

The mothers of these schoolgirls remain in tears, continuing to hope that the government will be able to overtake the rebels and return their daughters.
What appears to be clear is that the spirit of these girls will not allow the government to get away with shutting them out.

Their fighting spirit appears to be taking a stab at the Nigerian leadership by fomenting chaos and confusion inside and outside the government.

At the time of this writing , the Senate President, David Mark, has shut down the Legislature, which is a win for the Boko Haram militants who want to see the government hit the hardest politically.

In order to avert a further or even a total breakdown of law and order in the country ahead of the 2015 elections, it should be demanded from Jonathan that he simply find the girls, dead or alive, or risk seeing the nation's leadership bear a much heavier spiritual and emotional toll from the Chibok Girls' spirit.

Should the government continue to exhibit the same erratic form of power play, who knows whether the forces of the Chibok Girls' spirit could further roil the nation into a potentially confusing presidential election marked with national disaster, crisis or breakdown?

Dr. John Egbeazien Oshodi is a Forensic, Clinical and National Psychologist and a former Secretary-General of the Nigeria Psychological Association.

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Articles by John Egbeazien Oshodi, Ph.D.