Boko Haram suspected of kidnapping 60 more women. Does anyone care?
Fans hold a sign in support of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram at the Group F football match between Iran and Nigeria on June 16, 2014. (AFP PHOTO/JEWEL SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
From the outset, it was probably inevitable. What was once an international army of protesters that spanned both continents and the Twitterverse has dwindled.
Nearly three months have passed since Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from a dormitory. Boko Haram is suspected of kidnappingapproximately 60 more women and girls. And #Bringbackourgirls has, by nearly every measure, failed.
It’s not surprising. Internet activism has a finite life span. In a matter of days, it blinks into existence, then blinks into oblivion.
Still, the disinterest now — even following additional Boko Haram kidnappings — has left some observers with a bad taste in their mouths. Teju Cole, a prominent Nigerian-American novelist who wrote a powerful essay called “The White-Savior Industrial Complex” in response to the 2012 Joseph Kony phenomenon, said the West’s fleeting interest in Nigeria conveys a “simple wrong.”
