Chibok girls: 82 reunited with families in Nigeria

 

The fate of the Chibok girls

 

 

In April 2014 Islamist militants kidnapped 276 girls from their school in Chibok in north-eastern Nigeria.

This month dozens were released.

But when will the rest be free?

It was 14 April 2014 when the militants came to take them.

They were sleeping in their dormitory at Chibok Girls’ Secondary School, with many having come from distant villages to take exams.

Then Boko Haram struck. Altogether 276 girls were kidnapped.

The Islamist militant group had terrorised the north-eastern corner of Nigeria since a wave of attacks in 2009.

They had kidnapped many girls and women before in a conflict that hadn’t garnered significant worldwide attention, but this time was different.

A massive social-media driven campaign followed under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Michelle Obama was among the slew of famous people who endorsed it.

But what happened to the girls? 

 

 

A worldwide social media campaign,

supported by well-known figures 

such as Michelle Obama, followed the kidnapping

 

In the confusion immediately after the kidnapping, 57 managed to escape, but the rest were driven far into the Sambisa forest.

For more than three years the captured girls moved from forest, to city, to caves – shuttled surreptitiously around north-eastern Nigeria.

According to one source, there was plenty of food to begin with – even meat from stolen cows. Boko Haram controlled vast swathes of land and pillaged towns at will.

But 18 months on and with elections looming, the government began taking the war seriously. The army was properly supplied for the first time and made fast gains.

That put pressure on Boko Haram but it also made life harder for their captives - sometimes the girls did not even get one meal a day.

Eventually things improved. The international attention had made them valuable assets – to be traded – and the kidnappers knew it. In the propaganda war, delivering hostages well-fed and healthy would be a show of strength. 

 

 

The 82 

The 82 girls had travelled in the dark to reach the rendezvous point and were waiting nervously on the edge of a forest, near the Cameroon border.

With a cloud of dust and the rumble of heavy engines, four armoured 4x4s approached, bouncing along a dirt track.

The girls didn’t know how to react. They stood in line, shrouded in dark, floor-length hijabs and guarded by seven militants. One read out their names from a list to the mediator who had come to collect them.

Each was asked out loud: “Throughout the time you were with us, did anyone rape you or touch you?” The mediator later said that they had all answered no.

Then it dawned on them that this finally meant freedom. As they ran to the cars they started to clap and joyously burst into song.

Soon they were speeding through savannah-scrub and forest in a convoy of cars.

After a night at an army base, the girls boarded four military helicopters to get to the nearby city of Maiduguri, before flying on to the Nigerian capital Abuja. 

It was a low-key arrival on a sleepy Sunday morning. The luxury white coaches, flanked by escort vehicles, sped down empty boulevards, past the city’s grand cathedral and mosque.

It was a place most of the girls had never seen - totally unlike the dusty roads of the rural villages where they had grown up.

They were poked and prodded by doctors and nurses, before being handed polo shirts in fluorescent green, orange and red, and given sheets of patterned cloth to wrap around as skirts and hair ties.

Hours later they were lined up in the dark outside a grand villa, to be paraded in front of a tall, slender, bespectacled man that most of them didn’t recognise.

He was the president, and his election had come while the girls were still in captivity. 

The 82 released girls meet the Nigerian president

 

The girls looked as likely to laugh as to cry, dazed and overwhelmed at the attention.

It took time for the news to filter through to their parents in remote, rural Chibok. A full week later they finally received official confirmation.

It was a pleasantly cool morning in Chibok district’s second largest town Mbalala, and the church was quickly filling up for the 8am Sunday service.

The weekly market had been cancelled because of fears over a possible suicide bomb attack.

And the church security guards were searching people as they entered - standard practice even in this remote rural region.

Prayers and singing began the service, with the pastor thanking God for the girls’ release. 

 

Churchgoers in Mbalala give thanks for the release of the girls

 

Most of them had been Christian when they were abducted, but many converted to Islam while in Boko Haram's clutches - either by force or in the hope of better treatment.

Yakubu Nkeki is the chairman of Chibok Parents' Association and one of the few invited to Abuja to see the freed girls and verify their identities. He brought photographs to show to families after the service, but first he addressed the congregation.

Urging the faithful to continue praying for the girls still held hostage, he then headed home to meet more families. His house has long been a monthly meeting place for Chibok parents. 

 

He read out the names on the list. Parents eagerly checked photos to confirm identities.

And it was an even more special moment for Nkeki - among those freed was Maimuna, the niece he’d brought up as a daughter from four years old. 

 

“When I first saw her she jumped up. She grabbed me and I grabbed her. I held her and started dancing around with her,” he recalls, clapping his hands together as a grin explodes across his face.

“She started laughing, then she started crying. I asked why, and she said it was because she didn’t expect to see me again.”

Five of the seven members of his extended family who had been abducted have now been released.

“It was a wonderful day for Chibok citizens.”

Yakubu Nkeki

Those parents coming to terms with the fact that their girls weren’t free looked on in sadness, but also in the hope their time would soon come.

In Abuja, Samuel Yaga and his wife Rebecca were left disappointed – they were convinced their daughter Sarah, who’s now 20, would be among those released.

“I am waiting for a phone call – to tell us she is safe,” says Samuel a couple of days after the 82 were freed.

“There are many Sarahs on the list – the surname is wrong, but perhaps it is a mistake,” says her mother Rebecca.

 

The Samuel family look in vain for their own daughter among the released

 

 

 

 

 

 

But as they looked through the video footage of the girls, desperately trying to recognise Sarah, the hope began to drain from them.

“Even if she is not there, although I will be disappointed, I will still be happy for those families whose daughters have come back because some day the rest will be freed,” Rebecca says.

Two family members of each girl are being invited to go to see their daughters in the capital for an emotional reunion, but there are mixed feelings in Chibok as so many girls are still not free.

And even those who have been released may not be able to go home any time soon.

A life apart

 

This wasn’t the first time that Chibok girls had been released. Last October, 21 had emerged from captivity after long negotiations. They were thin and unhealthy, but alive.

The world watched as they were finally reunited with their families, but then all went quiet.

Some parents have been occasionally allowed to visit the secure unit where they are held in Abuja but the government has kept the media away and said little about them.

The Chibok girls are a high-value target that the government cannot afford to lose.”

The girls – joined by three others who escaped Boko Haram, making a total of 24 – don’t have phones of their own and their parents only hear from them when the authorities call from blocked numbers.

For Christmas they were taken back to Chibok but strict security rules meant they couldn’t go home.

They stayed at a local politician’s house and families were invited to visit at different time of the day. The security services were heavy-handed - deleting photographs taken by friends and family.

The government argues Chibok is not a safe place for the freed girls to be.

Boko Haram fighters still lurk in the forest to the north of town, and make regular attacks on outlying villages looking for food.
The Chibok girls are a high-value target the government cannot afford to lose, and capturing one of them again would be a real victory for Boko Haram.

But as 82 more girls have been released, questions are being asked about whether they might be exchanging one form of imprisonment for another.

“They are fine – very seriously – and they are continuing their education,” says Yakubu Nkeki.

“Every month we pay a visit to them and take their parents too, and they chat to them for almost two or three days before they come back. That is what we did for almost a year now. They are fine.”

 

Source: BBC.COM