Ten years after Boko Haram militants abducted 276 girls from a boarding school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, 92 girls are still in the hands of their captors. Nigerian journalist Luka Binniyat made a fact-finding visit to Chibok for CSI and heard from parents about the trauma, depression and hardship the families of the missing girls have endured.
On the night of April 14, 2014, Boko Haram jihadists seized 276 girls from their school dormitory in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok. The sensational story soon made headlines around the world and went viral on social media with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. But despite a high-profile international campaign to win the Chibok girls’ release, ten years on one third of them are still missing. Their parents’ agony continues.
Chibok is a semi-urban community of about 30,000 inhabitants situated 80 miles south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. Set in scrubland and bounded by low hills and flat plains, Chibok is of historic importance to the Kibaku ethnic group, said to be 90 percent Christian.
The absence of their daughters has had a devastating effect on the community, says Yakubu Nkeki, the chairman of an association that represents parents of the abducted Chibok girls. Nkeki even says that dozens of parents in their group have died from the anguish and economic hardship they suffered after the kidnapping.
“At the last count, 44 members of our association have died,” Nkeki said. “They died from trauma and frustration. There are parents with two daughters that were kidnapped. They couldn’t bear it and lapsed into severe depression and died.”
“The abduction of our daughters is a horrible crime that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy,” he told CSI. “For the past ten years it has been one nightmare after the other for us parents.”
The chairman’s daughter was among a group of Chibok girls rescued in 2020. He is reluctant to talk about her for her own security. But he told CSI that she is no longer in Borno State and is studying at a higher education institution. Nkeki’s niece was also abducted, and came free in 2017.
Other parents have suffered strokes brought on by the stress, Nkeki told CSI. They include a man whose daughter contacted him out of the blue earlier this year.
“The so-called husband of the girl called him from their hiding place somewhere in the Mandara mountains and informed him that his daughter had given birth,” the chairman of the parents’ association said. The fighter then allowed the man to speak to his daughter.
“It was the first time he had heard from her,” Nkeki said. “She told him that she had given birth once before but that she lost that baby.”
The girl said that her “husband” had agreed to allow her to visit her parents on condition that she returned to him. But the next day the militant called to say he had changed his mind as his wife might be rescued by the military.
According to Nkeki, the girl’s father collapsed and fell into a long coma. When he came out of it, he had lost the power of speech and the ability to walk.
“He’s the fourth in that condition now,” he said.
Nkeki added that the families’ situation has been made worse by the general insecurity in the area caused by sporadic Boko Haram raids on the town, including on January 1, 2024.
“Most of us are basically farmers and our most fertile lands are far from Chibok,” he said. “You will be killed or kidnapped by Boko Haram if you go there.”
“So, our economic power has been greatly reduced. We can barely make ends meet.”
Nkeki was also critical of the Nigerian military’s response. If the military patrolling the bush find people working on their farm despite the risk from Boko Haram, “they arrest you and treat you as a suspected terrorist.”
The Borno State Commissioner of Information and Home Security, Usman Tarr, said he was unaware of the “high-handed approach” of the military in Chibok.
“We have sent a large number of troops to secure the town and ensure that peace reigns. I am not aware of any issues between residents of Chibok and the military,” Tarr told CSI.
“All I know is that riding motorcycles in Chibok and everywhere in Borno State is banned. That’s because terrorists use them when they raid communities. If the military finds you riding one, you become a suspect,” he said.
Luka Binniyat is an award-winning Kaduna-based writer and freelance journalist who specializes in conflict reporting. In 2021 he spent time in jail for his reporting of massacres in the state.
A church signpost in Chibok. Luka Binniyat
Boko Haram launched its insurgency in Borno State in 2009. Shortly thereafter the jihadist terror group – whose mission is to abolish Western education and civilization in Nigeria and establish an Islamic caliphate – began to target schools.
On April 14, 2014, it was the turn of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, whose students were preparing to take their final exams. The militants burst into the school at the dead of night, abducting the 276 girls and loading them onto trucks.
As national and international pressure on the Nigerian state grew, the Islamist terrorists released 103 of the girls in 2017 following behind-the-scenes negotiations with the government.
Additionally, over the years a number of girls have managed to escape by themselves or have been rescued. Many of them gave birth in captivity to the children of Boko Haram.
Lydia Simon, who found her way to a Nigerian military base in the Mandara mountains south of Borno in early May this year, is the latest of the abducted girls to regain her freedom.
According to the parents’ association, 92 girls are still missing.
Two of Yana Gana’s daughters were abducted. Luka Binniyat
Yana Gana, 61, is the women’s leader of the Chibok parents’ association. Two of her daughters were among those kidnapped. One (name withheld) was released in 2017 and is now working with an NGO in Maiduguri. The other daughter, Janet Gana, now 27, is still with Boko Haram. She called her parents once in 2021 to say that she has two sons with a Boko Haram commander.
“I don’t care in what shape she is returned or how many children she has had with the terrorists,” Gana told CSI. “I just want her home,” she said and began to sob.
“I will care for her and the children and I am ready to forgive the terrorists,” she added. “But I know that I will never approve or recognize her forced marriage to an enemy of Jesus.”
