The Nigerian army has announced that it has found two of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram jihadists in 2014, bringing to 14 the number of young girls found in recent years. They were among 276 schoolgirls aged 12 to 17 abducted in 2014 from their boarding school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria. This affair had provoked a global campaign called #BringBackOurGirls (“#RamenerNosFilles”).
Of the 276 schoolgirls, 57 had managed to flee and 80 others had been exchanged for Boko Haram officials in negotiations with the authorities. Subsequently, other girls were found, most with children of Boko Haram fighters, but 96 are still missing.
Married by force
On Thursday, Nigerian officers introduced Hauwa Maltha and Esther Marcus to the press in Maiduguri, the regional capital. The two young women were rescued on April 21. “I present to you the last two girls from Chibok to have been saved (…) during a military operation,” said General Ibrahim Ali. The two young girls were 12 years old at the time of the abduction. They were married to Boko Haram jihadists.
Hauwa Maltha was found pregnant and with a three-year-old child. She was married to three different jihadists, according to the officer. Esther Marcus was also twice married to jihadists. “We weren’t married by choice,” said Hauwa Maltha. According to her, it was the historic leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, who married them to his men.
Abubakar Sekau died in May 2021 in fighting with the Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap). Since the kidnapping of “the Chibok girls”, many other schools or universities have been attacked in northern Nigeria in recent years, some by jihadists, but mostly by criminal groups who practice mass kidnapping for ransom. The jihadist insurgency in the Northeast has lasted fourteen years and has left 40,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced.