Kidnapping of female students in Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria
On the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students and also Muslim students aged from 16 to 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group called Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Prior to the raid, the school had been closed for four weeks due to deteriorating security conditions, but the girls were in attendance in order to take final exams in English.
57 of the schoolgirls escaped immediately following the incident by jumping from the trucks on which they were being transported, and others have been rescued by the Nigerian Armed Forces on various occasions. Hopes have been raised that the 219 remaining girls might be released, however some girls are believed to be dead. Amina Ali, one of the missing girls, was found in May 2016. She claimed that the remaining girls were still there, but that six had died. As of 14 April 2021, seven years after the initial kidnapping, over 100 of the girls remain missing.
Some have described their capture in appearances at international human rights conferences. Boko Haram has used the girls as negotiating pawns in prisoner exchanges, offering to release some girls in exchange for some of their captured commanders in jail.
The girls kidnapped in Chibok in 2014 are only a small percentage of the total number of people abducted by Boko Haram. Amnesty International estimated in 2015 that at least 2,000 women and girls had been abducted by the group since 2014, many of whom had been forced into sexual slavery.
Background.
The terrorist group Boko Haram wants to institute an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria and is in particular opposed to western-style modern education, which they say lures people away from following Islamic teaching as a way of life. By 2014, tens of thousands of people had been killed in attacks perpetrated by the group, and the Nigerian federal government declared a state of emergency in May 2013 in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa during its fight against the insurgency. The resulting crackdown led to the capture or killing of hundreds of Boko Haram members, with the remainder retreating to mountainous areas from which they began increasingly to target civilians. However, the campaign failed to stabilise the country. A French military operation in Mali also pushed Boko Haram and AQIM terrorists into Nigeria.
Boko Haram began to target schools in 2010, killing hundreds of students by 2014. A spokesperson for the group said such attacks would continue as long as the Nigerian government continued to interfere with traditional Islamic education. 10,000 children have been unable to attend school as a result of activities by Boko Haram. Boko Haram has also been known to kidnap girls, whom it believes should not be educated, and use them as cooks or sex slaves.
On 6 July 2013, armed men from Boko Haram attacked Government Secondary School in Mamudo, Yobe State, killing at least 42 people. Most of those killed were students, with some staff members among the dead. On 29 September 2013, armed men from Boko Haram gained access to the male hostel in the College of Agriculture in Gujba, Yobe State, killing forty-four students and teachers.
Boko Haram's attacks intensified in 2014. In February, the group killed more than 100 Christian men in the villages of Doron Baga and Izghe. That same month, 59 boys were killed in the Federal Government College attack in northeastern Nigeria. In March, the group attacked the Giwa military barracks, freeing captured militants. The Chibok abduction occurred on the same day as a bombing attack in Abuja in which at least 88 people died. The road leading to Chibok is frequently targeted due to the fact that there is little to no government protection for commuters for the village. Boko Haram was blamed for nearly 4,000 deaths in 2014. Training received from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has helped Boko Haram intensify its attacks.
Jonathan N.C. Hill of King's College London has suggested that Boko Haram kidnapped these girls after coming increasingly under the influence of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and asserts that the group's goal is to use girls and young women as sexual objects and as a means of intimidating the civilian population into compliance. Hill describes the attacks as similar to the kidnapping of girls in Algeria in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Kidnapping.
On the night of 14 April 2014, members of the Islamic jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram attacked the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Nigeria, a majority Christian village. A few hours prior to the raid, residents in Chibok had received phone calls from neighbouring villages warning them of the incoming attack, who had witnessed convoys containing armed insurgents driving in the direction of the town. The kidnappers broke into the school, pretending to be soldiers of the Nigerian Armed Forces and dressed in matching military uniforms. The militants also engaged approximately 15 soldiers based in Chibok, who were unable to stop the attack as the militants had superior numbers and firepower, and no reinforcements were sent by the Nigerian Military during the course of the attack. A soldier and a police officer were killed during the course of the raid. The attack lasted for about 5 hours, during which houses in Chibok were also burned down.
According to accounts given by some of the girls, including a diary written by two of the girls (Naomi Adamu and Sarah Samuel) whilst in captivity, the militants had intended to steal a piece of machinery and were initially unsure what to do with the girls. They told the girls to get out and come with them. Some girls were loaded into vehicles and the rest had to walk several miles until other trucks came to take them away, possibly into the Konduga area of the Sambisa Forest, a former nature reserve covering 60,000 km2 where Boko Haram were known to have fortified camps. An unidentified senior military source believed that the girls may have been split up and placed in different Boko Haram camps, around Lake Chad, the Gorsi mountains and the Sambisa forest. 57 girls were able to escape by jumping from the trucks in which they were being transported.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, local vigilantes and parents searched the Sambisa forest in an attempt to locate and rescue some of the kidnapped girls, however were unsuccessful in finding any of the captives.
The school had been closed for four weeks before the attack due to deteriorating security conditions, however students from multiple schools and villages were in attendance at the time of the raid to take final exams in Physics. There were 530 students registered to participate in Senior Secondary Certificate Examination at the Government Girls Secondary School, although it is unclear how many were in attendance at the time of the attack. The children were aged from 16 to 18 years of age and were in their final year of school. There was initial confusion over the number of girls kidnapped, with the Nigerian military initially incorrectly claiming in a statement that the majority of the girls had escaped or been released and only eight were still unaccounted for. Parents said that 234 girls were missing, however according to the local police approximately 276 children were taken in the attack, of whom 53 had escaped by 2 May. It is widely accepted that initially 276 girls were kidnapped. Other reports gave various other figures for the number of kidnapped and missing students.
Amnesty International condemned the Nigerian government, stating that it believed that the Nigerian military had a four hour advance warning of the kidnapping but failed to send reinforcements to protect the school. The Nigerian military later confirmed that they had a four-hour advance notice of the attack but stated that their over-extended forces were unable to mobilize reinforcements.
Aftermath.
Events in 2014.
The overwhelming majority of the kidnapped girls who were Christian were forced to convert to Islam. The girls were forced into marriage with members of Boko Haram, with a reputed bride price of ₦2,000 each ($6/£4). Sightings of the students were reported by villagers living in the Sambisa Forest, considered a refuge for Boko Haram. Others reported seeing the students crossing into the neighbouring countries of Chad and Cameroon with the militants, though Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno State in Nigeria, said on 11 May that he had sighted the abducted girls and claimed that they had not been taken across the borders into either country. The Nigerian Military enlisted help from local volunteers and vigilantes in order to search forests close to Nigeria's borders by 21 April. Local residents were able to track the movements of the students with the help of contacts across north eastern Nigeria. A diary written by some of the kidnapped students described how some were able to escape, but were returned to Boko Haram by local villagers and whipped as punishment.
On 2 May, the Nigerian police said that the exact number of students kidnapped was unclear and asked parents to forward the names and photos of kidnapped girls so an official count could be made. The police blamed damage to school records during the attack as a reason for the confusion. Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan spoke publicly about the kidnapping for the first time on 4 May, saying the government was doing everything it could to find the missing girls. At the same time, he criticized parents for not supplying enough information about their missing children, claiming that they were not fully cooperating with the police.
"The Guardian" reported that the British Royal Air Force conducted Operation Turus in response to the kidnapping. A source involved with the operation told the "Observer" that "the girls were located in the first few weeks of the RAF mission", and that "we [the RAF] offered to rescue them, but the Nigerian government declined", because they viewed the matter as a "national issue" to be resolved by Nigerian intelligence and security services. Sir Andrew Pocock, British High Commissioner to Nigeria at the time of the kidnapping, said that a couple of months after the kidnapping, a group of up to 80 of the Chibok girls were seen by American "eye in the sky" technology but nothing was done. About 80 girls, a camp and evidence of vehicle movement were spotted next to a local landmark called the "Tree of Life" in the Sambisa forest.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnappings in a video released shortly after 1pm on 5 May. Shekau claimed that "Allah instructed me to sell them... I will carry out his instructions", and that "Slavery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them slaves." He said the girls should not have been in school and instead should have been married since girls as young as nine are suitable for marriage. Another video was released a week later, which showed about 130 girls dressed in hijabs and long Islamic chadors. This was the first public sighting of the girls since they were abducted from Chibok. In this video, Shekau acknowledged that many of the girls were not Muslims, but that some had converted to Islam and that they would "treat them well the way the Prophet Muhammad treated the infidels he seized". Shekau also mentioned that he would not release the girls until captured Boko Haram militants in prison were released, raising the possibility of a prisoner exchange with the Nigerian government.
Following the Chibok kidnapping, several attacks linked to Boko Haram occurred in Nigeria. On 5 May, at least 300 residents of the nearby town of Gamboru Ngala were killed in an attack by Boko Haram militants after Nigerian security forces left the town to search for the kidnapped students. The next day, Boko Haram militants abducted 8 girls aged between 12 and 15 from northeastern Nigeria. In the night of 13 to 14 May, Boko Haram ambushed a military convoy that was searching for the abductees near Chibok, killing twelve soldiers and wounding several others. The incident led to mutiny of government forces at Maiduguri, reducing the ability of the Nigerian Army to rescue the schoolgirls. Between 20 and 23 June, 91 women and