When her Boko Haram captors told Margret Yama she would be going home, she thought it was a trick. She and the other girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok, in north-east Nigeria's Borno state, had been held for three years and had been taunted before about the possibility of release.
But then came the day in May 2017 when the girls were escorted to a Red Cross convoy on the edges of the Sambisa Forest. They were driven to Banki, a town on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon, where a military helicopter picked them up.
Yama was one of 82 girls recovered that month after negotiations between the militants and Nigerian authorities. The government had been under intense pressure to secure the release of all 276 Chibok girls, who were abducted from their state school dormitories in April 2014 in a kidnapping that made headlines globally.
Ten years on, many of the Chibok abductees, now women, have been freed or escaped, but about 100 are still missing. Sources have told the Guardian there are no negotiations under way for the release of the remaining girls, despite assurances given to parents by the Borno authorities. Meanwhile, many of those who returned home have struggled to be accepted back into their communities.
So why are so many girls believed to be still in captivity and what has been done to help those who were recovered? The Chibok abduction on the night of 14 April 2014 was not the first time schoolchildren were targeted by militants - nor has it been the last. Boko Haram, which emerged as a jihadist movement in north-east Nigeria in 2009, literally means "western education is forbidden".
この記事は The Guardian Weekly の April 19, 2024 版に掲載されています。
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