Tragedy of ‘Chibok girls’ endures outside spotlight
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 about 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, said 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.
Those who spent the longest time in captivity have often had the most difficulty reintegrating into civilian life.
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 said, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisals by the military. “I want to go home and stay with my family. There is no place like home.”
Three of the surviving women said 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 and 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.
About 90 Chibok girls are still missing. Based on the accounts of former abductees, the Murtala Muhammed 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 MuhammedOyebode, the foundation’s head. A parents association for the Chibok girls also estimates dozens are now dead.