Nigeria: 10 years ago the kidnapping of the 200 Chibok students and lives are still at risk in schools

ROMA – Ten years after the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigerian authorities have failed to secure schools, writes Human Rights Watch (HRW). Save the Children documents that from 2014 to today, more than 1,600 children have been kidnapped in the north of the country. In the north-east the conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian armed forces continues to claim victims while in the north-west criminal groups impose a regime of terror in the villages. In February and March 2024 alone, bandits abducted over 200 students from schools in Kaduna and Sokoto states. “Many children in northern Nigeria face the daily dilemma of whether to study or stay at home to avoid the risk of being kidnapped and this reflects the crisis that the whole country is experiencing,” comments Anietie Ewang, researcher at HRW.

What happened ten years ago. On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram, an armed Islamic group, kidnapped 276 girls while they were at school in Chibok, a city in the north-eastern state of Borno. Some managed to escape, others were freed, but according to theUNICEF 96 are still prisoners. Boko Haram, known for its staunch opposition to girls’ education, carried out other kidnappings similar to the Chibok one over the next few years. One of the most serious was the kidnapping of 110 students from a school in Dapchi, a city in Yobe state, in 2018. If Boko Haram kidnaps in the north-east to prevent girls from going to school, in the north-west the bandits capture students and then ask for ransom, especially in rural villages.

The kidnappings. Between December 2020 and February 2021, a series of abductions, including that of over 600 schoolchildren in Zamfara, Katsina and Niger states, brought the issue to the fore. In the aftermath of Chibok, the government approved the Safe Schools Declaration, an international political commitment to protect education from attacks and schools from military use which automatically turns them into targets. The government also adopted an initiative that aimed to raise funds to make schools safer by moving them to less remote and more protected areas, especially in the states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, which are the most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency . But the initiative, which started with great momentum, has suffered a series of slowdowns over the years, writes HRW, mainly due to the lack of a national strategy.

The witness. A girl from Chibok, who remained a prisoner of Boko Haram for over two years and was then released together with 20 other students, explained to the organization that the frequent news of kidnappings in her schools brings back memories of the ordeal she went through . “Every time I hear about children being kidnapped I feel terrible, I am helpless. I will never be able to forget being torn away from my parents, from my family, for so long,” she says. Today you are 28 years old and study natural and environmental sciences at university. Kemi Okenyodo, security and governance expert and executive director of Rule of Law and Empowerment Initiative in Abuja, told HRW that school kidnappings similar to the one in Chibok ten years ago highlight the failure to learn from past experiences and also the ineffectiveness of state intervention. Faced with the increasingly concrete threat of attacks, many schools have closed completely, leaving over 20 million children without education: one of the highest numbers in the world, reports theUNESCO. According to UNICEF, 66 percent of children who do not attend school in Nigeria come from the north-east and north-west regions, which are also the poorest in the country.

The women’s question. For girls the challenges are increasingly difficult. If abducted, they risk rape or other forms of sexual violence. If they stop studying, they risk early marriage, another of the plagues widespread in these regions of Nigeria. In 2021, the government adopted a National Plan for the safety and protection of schools from violence. The aim was to make institutions safe places and strengthen the police’s ability to respond to threats. The Plan also included a chapter dedicated to the education of children displaced by crises and conflicts. The authorities had committed to investing around $314.5 million. To date – writes HRW – details on the implementation of the project are almost non-existent and therefore it is not clear whether and to what extent it has been implemented.