#BringBackOurGirls: What Happened in Chibok on the Night of April 14, 2014?

Between the late night of April 14 and early hours of April 15, 2014, 276 schoolgirls all under 18 years of age, were abducted by the Islamist jihadist group, Boko Haram, in Chibok, Borno State.

Before that event, Boko Haram, whose very name derides western education, had targeted schools in Nigeria’s northeast, kidnapping, maiming and killing students and their teachers. The armed sect even went after moderate muslims who made it a duty to enroll their children in school. However, what happened that night, a decade ago, was an audacious move that highlighted the depth of Boko Haram’s insurgent ambitions.

The kidnapping was a targeted act, no doubt. Months before, the Government Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok had been closed due to the security situation in Borno and other nearby states. The school only partially reopened so students in the last phase of their secondary education could write final exams. Boko Haram struck Chibok, a majority Christian town in the southern part of Borno, after the reopening, with the schoolgirls at the center of the attack.

According to reports, the armed terrorists broke into the school disguised as soldiers, wearing matching camo uniforms. After subduing the soldiers in the town, just about a dozen of them, and with no reinforcements coming soon, they ransacked parts of the town and burnt some houses in the process. Leaving the town, they then proceeded to round up the girls and lead them deep into Sambisa Forest, a stronghold for the terrorist group at the time, and for several more years.

In one of her diary entries, Naomi Adamu, one of the kidnapped girls, recalls that the kidnappers had come into the town to steal an “engine block.” Kidnap wasn’t the plan, rather they had come for a piece of machinery but couldn’t find it. After allegedly considering several options, including burning the girls, the attackers decided to kidnap them, in order not to leave empty-handed.

219 of the girls were taken, with 57 escaping while they were being transported to Sambisa.

The outcry was swift, locally and internationally, gaining traction with the social media hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls. Many people posted pictures with the hashtag handwritten or printed on mini-placards, including former U.S. First Lady, Michelle Obama. In the years that followed, films were made and books were written to sustain the calls for the release of the girls.

The Nigerian government faced condemnation for failing to effectively deal with the insurgent threat of Boko Haram for several years. Shortly after the mass kidnapping, Amnesty International alleged that Nigerian security forces were alerted hours before the event took place but did nothing to stop it.

“It amounts to a gross dereliction of Nigeria’s duty to protect civilians, who remain sitting ducks for such attacks,” Amnesty Africa director Netsanet Belay said. “The Nigerian leadership must now use all lawful means at their disposal to secure the girls’ safe release and ensure nothing like this can happen again.”

It would take three years for the government to secure the release of 103 of the kidnapped girls, and that was after the government declared Boko Haram “technically defeated.” 21 girls were released in October 2016, in a negotiation effort, and another additional 82 were brought back in May 2017. While the details of the deal that led to the freeing of some of the girls were not revealed, it’s alleged that it involved the exchange of top level Boko Haram members and high amounts of cash.

A decade later, not all of the kidnapped schoolgirls have been brought back from Boko Haram and one of the survivors tells OkayAfrica she doesn't want her former classmates to be forgotten. It has been reported that most, if not all, were married off to Boko Haram members and live across several West African countries — like neighboring Niger and Chad — where the insurgent group operates.

Also ominous is the fact that the security problems, especially in Nigeria’s general northern region, have deepened in the ten years since the mass kidnapping. Just last month, it was reported that Boko Haram kidnapped somewhere between 113 and 319 young girls in Borno, while it razed down 25 buildings meant for victims of insurgency in another attack. This is despite the Borno state government’s claims that 95 percent of those with Boko Haram ideologies have died.

It is appalling that mass kidnappings still occur in Nigeria, like last month when 300 students and staff were kidnapped by unknown bandits in Kuriga, Kaduna state. Thankfully, they’ve since been released without any harm to the schoolchildren. But as the Chibok kidnapping and several similar but smaller scale events show, the safety of many young Nigerian children is far from guaranteed.