Daily Dispatch

Nigeria’s Chibok tragedy endures a decade on

Around 90 abducted young women remain unaccounte­d for

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Ten years ago, Solomon Maina’s daughter, Debora, was one of 276 schoolgirl­s kidnapped from their dormitory in the middle of the night by Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist militants.

Global outrage was swift. A ubiquitous “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign, drawing support from the likes of Michelle Obama and Sylvester Stallone, shined a spotlight on the abductions.

Then, in 2016 and 2017, negotiatio­ns led to the highly publicised liberation of around 100 of the captives.

Debora was not one of them.

A decade after that fateful night in April 2014, the world has largely forgotten the plight of the so-called Chibok girls. But for the victims and their families, the tragedy is ongoing.

“Especially at night, I think about my daughter,” Maina, in tears, told Reuters in an interview at his home in Chibok, a Christian enclave in the West African nation’s majority Muslim north.

“I will never forget her.” Abductees who have returned home have struggled to resume their interrupte­d lives. Some are raising children fathered by their captors. Others have waited years for funds promised by the government to continue their education.

Dozens freed only in the past few years are living inside a military-run rehabilita­tion camp with surrendere­d Boko Haram fighters they married in the bush, according to the Murtala Muhammed Foundation, a charity that advocates for them. With them are more than 30 children.

“I’m tired of staying in the camp,” one Chibok survivor told reporters, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisals by the military.

Three of the surviving women told reporters that in at least five cases women who arrived at the camp unmarried have been married to surrendere­d fighters once there.

Government officials have officiated over such weddings, in an apparent effort to appease the surrendere­d fighters, family members say.

Aid groups and relatives say there is no clarity surroundin­g when - or even if - the women in the camp will be allowed to return home.

“They were brainwashe­d. “Their psychologi­cal thinking and mindset were changed to favour their abductors,” said Dauda Yama whose daughter is inside the camp.

The state official in charge of the rehabilita­tion project did not respond to a request for comment.

Roughly 90 Chibok girls are still missing.

Based on the accounts of former abductees, the Murtala Muhammad Foundation believes a third of those have died in captivity.

“Some died of childbirth, some of starvation or snakebite others in government air strikes” against Boko Haram, said Aisha Muhammed-oyebode, the foundation’s head.

A parents associatio­n for the Chibok girls also estimates dozens are now dead.nigeria’s president’s office and the interior ministry did not respond to requests for comment on how many of the missing Chibok girls were believed to still be alive.

Early on, as the girls began emerging from captivity in the bush and their fate was still a rallying cause around the world, the government pledged to fund their studies in “any field of their choice.

“Some liberated captives are attending universiti­es as far afield as the United States. But some say the assistance never arrived.yagana Yamani waited for government funds for six years after escaping her captors. She finally asked her mother, a farmer, to help. Now 25, she is studying public health.

“They didn’t fulfil their promise,” she said.

The federal government did not respond to requests for comment on the question of whether it failed to provide promised support.

Nigeria’s military has been fighting Boko Haram since 2009 in a conflict that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 2 million.

While the group aims to topple Nigeria’s government to establish a state based on its own interpreta­tion of Islamic law, to many people around the world it is best known for the Chibok kidnapping.

Soon after the raid, then-president Goodluck Jonathan promised that the girls would be brought home. Solomon Maina feels he is alone grappling with his daughter’s fate.

Through a freed abductee, he learned that Debora had been injured but survived a bombing raid on Boko Haram. He believes she’s still out there, alive.

“Where is she now? Is she in a comfortabl­e place?” he said. “I think about this all the time.”—

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