TEN years ago today, in the dark of the night, the people of Chibok in Borno State, were soundly asleep, unaware of the impending horror that was about to unfold in their community.
Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the violent sound of gunfire. In a first of its kind in Nigeria, Boko Haram Islamic terrorists stormed into the village like ghosts, their faces masked, and their intentions clear. They moved swiftly, with ruthless efficiency, snatching girls of the Government Secondary School from their dormitories and dragging them into the night.
Panic erupted.Parents woke to the screams of their children being forced onto trucks headed for the dreaded Sambisa Forest, the enclave of the Salafists. With their hearts pounding with terror, the hapless parents rushed into the streets, desperate to protect their loved ones.It was too late. The Islamist militants were already gone, leaving behind a trail of pain, devastation, and sorrow. Ten years later, the agony is still thick in the community.
As the first light of dawn broke, the full extent of the tragedy became clear. Although 57 of the abducted schoolgirls managed to escape that night by jumping out of the moving trucks – 219 of them were taken into captivity –, they were snatched from their families, their future stolen in the blink of an eye.
Chibok, largely a village of Christians, was left to mourn, to grapple with the unimaginable loss, and to wonder if their daughters would ever return home. Their fear is understandable: some of the then-adolescent girls are yet to be rescued 10 years later.
A few weeks after the incident, the mass abduction sparked global outrage with various international figures promoting the release of the abducted students by using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, ranging from Michelle Obama to Malala Yousafzai. In Nigeria, Aisha Yesufu, Hadiza Bala-Usman, and Oby Ezekwesili were notable advocates, who campaigned for the return of the victims to their families.
It has been a decade of decadence since terrorists stormed the boarding school on April 14, 2014, to abduct the 276 girls. Between 2016 and 2017, two of the girls – Amina Nkeki and Serah Luka – were found. The girls were preparing for that year’s Senior West African School Certificate Examination. More than 100 of them were eventually freed. Amnesty International counts 82 as still missing, though others cite about 100.
Year after year, members of the Chibok Parents Association have called on the government to remember the remaining 108 Chibok girls, who are still in the captivity of the Boko Haram insurgents. The group notes that 48 parents of the Chibok girls had died due to the trauma of the loss of their daughters since the abduction.
Since 2014, Nigeria has been led by Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, and currently, Bola Tinubu serves as its president. Yet, for many citizens who reside in the North, little has changed. Mass kidnappings of students, especially girls, have continued unabated, scuttling the chances of education for thousands of children in the region.
On the evening of February 19, 2018, 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years old were kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in the Bursari Local Government area of Yobe State. Five schoolgirls reportedly died on the same day of their kidnapping. The following month, the militants freed the other girls with help from the Red Cross,except a lone Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, who refused to convert to Islam, as dictated by the Islamists. Leah is still in the den of the insurgents.
In a similar sordid twist, on the evening of December 11, 2020, over 300 students were kidnapped from the Government Science Secondary School, situated on the outskirts of Kankara, in Katsina State. The scene was not far away from the country home of the then-president, Buhari, who was observing a holiday at Daura at the time.
On 17 December, the former governor of Katsina, Aminu Masari, said that 344 of the victims had been freed from where they were being held in neighbouring Zamfara State.
Bandits invaded the Government Girls’ Secondary School, Jangebe in the Talata Mafara LGA of Zamfara State in February 2021, with pickup vehicles and motorcycles and forcefully evacuated and kidnapped over 300 students.
According to data from an international non-governmental organisation, Save the Children, between February 2014 and December 2022, at least 1,743 have been kidnapped, nearly 200 killed, and 25 buildings and schools destroyed during terrorist raids on schools. This is a huge price to pay for Nigerian children and their parents.
More than 1,600 children have been abducted or kidnapped across the North between February and March 2024 alone.
In March, the Islamists abducted over 200 residents of three internally displaced persons camps in the Gamborou-Ngala LGA in Borno State. The victims had left their camps in search of firewood in the bush to sell and augment their finances.
A few days later, bandits invaded a primary/junior secondary school in Kuriga, Chikun LGA of Kaduna State, where they abducted 137 pupils. The following weekend, bandits kidnapped another 15 Islamiyah school pupils in Sokoto State. This is an epidemic.
Mass abductions have also occurred in Niger State, North-Central Nigeria.
The government’s failure to learn from the Chibok incident and guarantee the safety of students has posed a serious threat to education, particularly to the girl-child in northern Nigeria.
A survey carried out by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics and UNICEF in 2021 showed that approximately half of the girls in the North-East and about 40 per cent in the North-West were not attending primary or lower secondary school, in contrast to less than 10 per cent in the southern states.
“No fewer than 618 schools were closed in six northern states (Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Niger, and Yobe) over the fear of attack and abduction of pupils and members of staff,” the UNICEF added.
This has sadly fallen in line with the Islamist insurgents’ ideological aversion to Western education, especially for girls, which is reflected in the term Boko Haram, which roughly translates to “Western education is forbidden” in Hausa.
Ten years is a long time to suffer the pain of the loss of a child. Unfortunately, the government seems to have moved on from the incidents. It should not. There must be a closure for the suffering families.
The federal and state governments need to put in place adequate measures to protect schools from mass abductions. There needs to be a stronger synergy between communities, local intelligence, and security operatives. The Safe School Initiative should gain wide acceptance and implementation among stakeholders.
State governments should invest in physical infrastructure in public, especially in the fencing of the schools to prevent easy access to the terrorists.
More importantly, there should be a renewed focus on police reform and rearmament. Tinubu needs to make his promise to deploy “detailed strategies to ensure that our schools remain safe sanctuaries of learning, not lairs for wanton abductions” a reality and halt the recurrence of the horrific Chibok abduction in other parts of the country.
