Ten Year Anniversary of Chibok Girls Kidnapping
On Sunday, April 14, the community in Chibok, Nigeria, held a special memorial service for the kidnapping of over 270 girls ten years before.
On that day in 2014, Boko Haram fighters kidnapped the schoolgirls, mostly Christians, from their dormitories at the federal government school. Though a some have been released in the past years, there are many girls whose status remain unknown.
Here are five things to know about the tenth anniversary of the Chibok Kidnapping.
- How have families coped with the agony of not knowing what has happened to their children?
For the still-waiting Chibok parents, the disappearance of their daughters has been like a slow death. Many bravely face each day, battling their sorrow-induced health problems, while others’ bodies have simply given up the fight. Yakubu Nkeki, the chairman of the Chibok Girls’ Parents’ Association told OD partners last year, “We lost 38 parents in the first three years of this kidnapping. The slightest illness can take their life due to high blood pressure.”
Many parents struggle with illnesses related to stress such as high blood pressure or diabetes. They wait and hope to hear any piece of news about their daughters, even if it is to know that they have died so that they can officially lay their daughters to rest.
- What has happened in the intervening ten years with kidnappings?
Following the Chibok kidnapping, other extremist groups have since used abduction as a tactic to terrorize Christian and moderate Muslim communities as a means to strengthen their ideological agenda and exploit for monetary gains.
Today kidnappings are a daily occurrence in Nigeria, but the impact is no less debilitating to those who have been taken and the families waiting to hear news, often selling all their belonging to pay exorbitant ransom payments.
In 2022, in an effort to make kidnapping an unprofitable endeavour, the Nigerian Senate passed a bill imposing a jail term of at least 15 years for paying a ransom to free someone who has been kidnapped. Further, they made the crime of abduction punishable by death in cases where victims die.
On April 14, the Chibok Community gathered to mark the ten-year anniversary of the kidnapping of over 270 schoolgirls.
- What has happened to the Chibok girls?
The schoolgirls can roughly be divided into four groups:
Group 1: Those who have escaped.
Group 2: Those whose status remains unknown; still held captive or they could be dead.
Group 3: Those confirmed dead through news brought by the escapees.
Group 4: Some girls have been released in the last few years and are now living inside a military-run rehabilitation camp with surrendered Boko Haram fighters they married in the bush. Three surviving women told Reuters that in at least five cases women who arrived at the camp unmarried have been married to surrendered fighters once there in an apparent effort to appease the surrendered fighters.
Open Doors partners spoke to parents who shared that their daughters in the rehabilitation camp can call them, but they have received no updates on whether the women will be released to their parents.
“Even though they are being taken care of, they are still living with repentant Boko Haram members in the same house. They won’t be able to differentiate the time they stayed in captivity and their time staying there now”, an OD partner who prefers to stay anonymous told us.
“They were brainwashed and their psychological thinking and mindset were changed to favour their abductors,” Dauda Yama, whose daughter is inside the camp, told Reuters.
- Chibok was a largely Christian school. How religiously motivated are these kidnappings (rather than just for money)?
In 2014 when the Chibok schoolgirls were taken, the motive was purely religious. Boko Haram wanted to send a clear message that Western education is forbidden under Sharia law.
The group began to attack schools in 2010, killing hundreds of students by 2014. The group warned that such attacks would continue as long as the Nigerian government continued to interfere with traditional Islamic education.
- What needs to happen for these kidnappings to stop?
Open Doors recommends that the international community urge the Nigerian government to:
- Discharge its constitutional duty to ensure the safety and security of civilians as per international conventions and treaties that Nigeria has ratified and therefore legally bound to respect;
- Take a strong stance against all violence, including Fulani militant violence, investigate the perpetrators, hold them accountable to the justice system and break the cycle of violence that is expanding to other areas of the country;
- Continue its efforts to liberate the hostages held by Boko Haram, which includes not only the Chibok girls but also young Christian girls such as Leah Sharibu.
Our recommendation to the Nigerian government is to urgently ensure the domestication of the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons into national law and ensure its full and effective implementation.
