In the early morning of April 14, 2014, Chibok went down in history as a synonym for pain. That night, dozens of armed men from the jihadist group Boko Haram broke into a girls' secondary school on the outskirts of this small town in northeastern Nigeria and kidnapped 276 students, most of them between 13 and 16 years old, in several trucks.
Although it was not the first attack on schools by the fundamentalist gang, whose name in Hausa means “Western education is a sin,” the largest mass kidnapping to date in the African country sparked a wave of international indignation under the slogan “Bring back our girls” (Give us back our girls) which was joined by celebrities from all over the planet such as the Obama couple, the activist Malala or actors such as Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn or Julia Roberts.
The action, born in Nigeria, mobilized dozens of governments to collaborate in the search for the girls. It was not enough. Ten years after that attack, at least 82 of the Chibok girls (other sources put the number at 91) are still missing and their families do not know their whereabouts or even if they are still alive.
One of the founders of that movement that demanded the freedom of the girls and uncle of one of the kidnapped women, Manasseh Allen, denounces to this newspaper the government's apathy towards those who remain captive and the impunity of the criminals. “We feel forgotten. The fight for the Chibok girls was a fight for the soul of Nigeria. We are tired of excuses. How can it be that we don't know anything about 82 girls? And the worst thing is that nothing has changed. Nothing!". His cry of despair is supported by a disheartening figure. Since the Chibok kidnapping, more than 1,400 boys and girls have been kidnapped in northern Nigeria by Boko Haram or other criminal gangs.
Although 57 of the girls managed to escape on the same day of the kidnapping (some jumped from moving trucks or hung from tree branches), the rest, 219, began a nightmare that day in the custody of one of the most dangerous groups. bloodthirsty in the world, which since its founding in 2002 in the city of Mauduguri, have killed more than 50,000 people and displaced 2.5 million. In addition to threatening to sell them into slavery, Boko Haram militants forced many of the girls into marriages with them and sexually forced them. Dozens of those who have returned were carrying their children conceived in captivity.
Mary Dauda is one of them. A student in Chibok, Dauda was one of the first to return home, two years later, thanks to the negotiation of several intermediaries, including Amnesty International, which achieved the release in two batches of 21 and 82 of the Chibok girls in the year 2016. Dauda remembers the climate of fear in which they lived in Sambisa, a wooded area with difficult access on the border of Nigeria and Cameroon, where the radical gang was hiding. “When we were captive, our captors told us that we had to marry them or else they would not give us food (…) they said that if we married them, that would be our life; If we didn't, we would be their slaves. “Those who refused to marry them remain captive.”
Glory Mainta, another of the girls kidnapped in Chibok, remembers an endless nightmare in that forest. “My captors did many things to me and the other girls. "They hit us, they yelled at us, there is nothing they wouldn't do to us..."
According to the Murtala Muhammed charitable foundation, the latest freed girls – in recent years, up to 34 have escaped or been rescued in small groups of two or three – live in a rehabilitation camp coordinated by the army in northern Nigeria. There are at least 30 children with them. After more than six or seven years among fundamentalists, professional support to reintegrate them is vital.
Dauda Yama, mother of one of the girls held in the camp, denounced this week the poor situation of the girls and lamented that “(the jihadists) have brainwashed the girls and changed their way of thinking and their psychological mentality.” ”.
In conversation with this newspaper, the Nigerian activist and spokesperson for the movement for the liberation of the Chibok girls, Jeff Okoroafor, is very critical of the successive governments leading Nigeria. “If all our girls have not been released it is because they are daughters of poor families. If a rich man's son disappears, in 24 hours he is released. It took a month to start the search for the Chibok girls, a month! “They were a political weapon that they used for their own benefit and when they stopped being politically profitable, they forgot about them.”
Okoroafor criticizes claims that some Chibok girls have decided to stay with their jihadist husbands. "It's a barbarity. What alternatives have you had? What supports? The girls suffer stigma upon returning home and the government does not help them financially or provide psychological support. If they decide to return to their captors, is that a free decision? "It's disgusting that they say that."
A decade after the Chibok horror, Comfort Ishaya's words sum up the hopelessness. Her daughter Hauwa has not returned. “I wonder if my daughter is still alive (...) When I eat, I think about her and wonder if she has food. We cannot forget the girls who remain missing. "I'm still looking for my daughter."
