The kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria sparked a global outcry in 2014. But mass kidnappings have also become a successful model in the West African country.
On an April night a decade ago, bearded men in rags and flip-flops picked up 276 girls from the dormitories of their boarding school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria. The gunmen forced the teenagers onto trucks and took them deep into a vast forest area in the West African country’s savannah. “We were beaten, yelled at – there was nothing they didn’t do to us,” says Glory Mainta, who was kidnapped that April 14. It wasn’t until two years later that the first of her comrades reappeared. She wandered malnourished through the forest with an infant and an Islamist terrorist whom she had been forced to marry.
A decade later, at least 82 of the Chibok girls are still missing. Mass kidnappings have become commonplace. “It’s not just the schools. Nobody is safe in Nigeria today,” says activist Fatimah Abba Kaka from the “Bring Back Our Girls” movement, which is fighting for the return of the Chibok girls, to the German Press Agency.
The mass abduction of the “Chibok Girls” by the Islamist terrorist militia Boko Haram was a top topic on social media worldwide in 2014. Celebrities such as US First Lady Michelle Obama, Pope Francis and Kim Kardashian tweeted under the hashtag “#BringBackOurGirls”. The US sent military support, but rescue attempts failed. 103 girls were finally ransomed in 2017 and 2018 – according to media research, for a ransom of 3 million euros and the exchange of five Boko Haram leaders. A few more escaped, others were killed.
Thousands of victims of mass kidnappings
What seemed like a tragic escalation in 2014 has become a recurring national emergency. On average, there has been a major kidnapping of more than five people almost every day this year, with a total of 1,867 people kidnapped, according to security consulting firm SBM. More than 15,000 people have fallen victim to mass kidnappings in the past five years, the majority within the last two years alone. It was only at the beginning of March that dozens of school children were kidnapped again, as were more than 200 women and children from a refugee camp.
Unlike before, it is no longer mainly the Islamist terrorists from Boko Haram who are responsible for the kidnappings, but rather criminal gangs. Boko Haram, whose name can be translated as “Western education is sin,” bases their terror on the fight for a caliphate in which girls in particular should be banned from learning. According to recent findings, the kidnapping of the Chibok girls was more of a coincidence during a robbery – but the global outcry that brought the previously almost unknown group into the spotlight made Boko Haram quickly realize what a powerful PR tool they had acquired . The group captured thousands more girls and young women, sometimes to marry them off to fighters or sell them off as slaves – but above all to extort ransom money.
The majority of kidnappings now take place in the northwest of the country. Gangs of warlords are at work there, kidnapping farmers for forced labor or demanding ransom from family members. The so-called bandits are also responsible for the recent mass kidnappings of school children. “The abduction of the Chibok girls has absolutely inspired the generation of bandits we have today,” analyzes security consultant Yahuza Getso Ahmad in the online medium Semafor.
SBM: Millions in income for the blackmailers
According to the World Bank, more than one in three people in Nigeria recently lived in extreme poverty on less than 2 euros a day. Steeply rising prices, shortages and crop failures due to bloody conflicts are driving many people into crime out of desperation, experts explain. Kidnappings are comparatively low-risk and bring in a lot of money. Ransom payments have been banned in Nigeria since 2022 – in practice, families continue to sell off everything they have in order to ransom children. According to SBM estimates, millions of euros flow into the blackmailers’ coffers every year.
Even if the fight against education for girls is no longer the main motivation, there is a risk of catastrophic effects on an entire generation. According to 2022 figures from the UN children’s fund Unicef, more than half of all girls in Nigeria do not attend school. Concerned parents marry off girls as early as possible to protect them from worse things. Thousands of schools are closed or destroyed. After the Chibok case, Nigeria’s government launched an initiative to secure schools. Aid money and investments amounting to tens of millions came from all over the world, but their whereabouts are not clear.
“The initiative that was supposed to protect schools only exists on paper. Nothing is being done to implement it. It is a failure of the government,” says “Bring Back Our Girls” activist Fatimah Abba Kaka. “They should evaluate the findings of the investigation, how the kidnapping could have taken place and where the failure lay. And the government should take care of freeing the remaining girls.”
“We’re still not sure”
Many of the released young women from Chibok have returned to school or are studying. “Whenever I hear that children have been kidnapped again, I feel terrible, helpless,” says a 28-year-old who was among the kidnapped girls and is now studying natural and environmental sciences. “We’re still not sure.”
Nigeria is the continent’s largest economy with one of the largest armies – but the country is consumed by corruption, soldiers are poorly paid and poorly equipped, and the police hardly exist in the area. Crises in every corner of the multi-ethnic state with more than 220 million inhabitants are stretching our forces.
Political scientist Chukwudi Victor Odoeme draws a bleak conclusion in an interview with the dpa: “People are so preoccupied with survival that they don’t care about the government’s failures. And those in power are happy that no one is holding them accountable.”