Ten years after Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls, nearly a third remain missing

The girls’ plight – and such a blatant attack on female education – was condemned around the world – AFP/Getty Images

It is when people speak badly of her son that Maryam feels worst about what happened to her.

She brushes off unkind comments directed at her and tries to take comfort in how her life has unfolded since she was kidnapped from school and forced to marry.

But when others call her boy “Son of Boko Haram”, or when she fears he will be ostracised because of what her captors did to her 10 years ago, it hurts.

“For me, I don’t mind, but if I hear them talking about my child, I will feel bad,” she told the Telegraph.

“Because he’s too young and it’s not his fault. But what they are going to tell him if they continue it, it will change his life and make him into something very bad and will make him not feel comfortable in that place.

“That is the only thing making me sometimes feel bad.”

Maryam Ali Maiyanga, pictured with her son, was 14 when she was snatched by Boko Haram

A decade ago Maryam Ali Maiyanga, then a 14-year-old from a poor farming family in north eastern Nigeria, was a pupil at the Government Girls Secondary School on the outskirts of the town of Chibok.

The town’s name was to become synonymous with mass kidnapping when gunmen from the Boko Haram group abducted nearly 300 girls and drove them into the nearby Sambisa forest.

Their plight, and such a blatant attack on girls and female education, was condemned around the world and their cause taken up by celebrities and international institutions.

A social media campaign, #bringbackourgirls, drew support from Angelina Jolie, Michelle Obama and the Nobel laureate Malala Yusufzai among others.

Yet 10 years on, international interest has waned and nearly 100 of the girls are still unaccounted for.

Maryam carrying her 10-month-old son after her rescue in 2016 – STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images

Nearly two dozen of those who have escaped or been freed have, like Maryam, borne children from their captors and must deal with stigma and discrimination.

The most recent captive reported to have been freed was found only this week.

Lydia Simon, who is five months pregnant, was rescued by Nigerian troops in the Gwoza area of Borno state, along with her three children.

The attack still casts a long, damaging shadow over girls’ education in the country. Campaigners say what should have been an urgent signal to protect education, particularly female education, went unheeded.

Instead, Chibok marked the start of a wave of similar abductions, often targeting schools, as armed gangs have found them a lucrative way to earn money and exert control.

Since Chibok, many hundreds if not thousands more students have been kidnapped across Nigeria.

A social media campaign, #bringbackourgirls, drew support from high profile figures – AFP/Getty Images

As recently as last month, hundreds of women and children were rounded up in two different abductions.

More than 200 pupils were snatched from the main Kuriga school in Kaduna state in early March and released two weeks later.

Days earlier, suspected Boko Haram fighters had abducted at least 400 mainly women and children from displacement camps in Gamboru Ngala, Borno state.

Dr Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, founder and chief executive of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation, a Nigerian aid and development organisation, said: “In the 10 years since the Chibok kidnapping caused global outrage, very little has changed on the ground in Nigeria where kidnapping is still as prevalent, if not worse than a decade ago.”

A recent survey by the Save the Children aid charity found there were 70 attacks on Nigerian schools between February 2014 and December 2022.

That included the kidnap of nearly 1,700 pupils and the killing of 184. Sixty teachers and school workers were kidnapped over the same period, and 14 killed.

Some 25 school buildings were destroyed.

The Government Girls Secondary School on the outskirts of Chibok. The town’s name became synonymous with the mass kidnapping – AFP via Getty Images

Schools are not the only target. SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based risk consultancy, estimates there have been a total of 735 mass abductions in Nigeria since 2019.

The Chibok attack, on the night of April 14 to 15 in 2014, remains the best known.

Boko Haram – whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’ in the local Hausa language – had launched an uprising for Islamic State in northeastern Nigeria in 2009.

They set up strongholds in the Gwoza hills and the Sambisa forest, under their leader, Abubakar Shekau.

Ms Maiyanga said she had heard of the group before the school attack, but they were little more than rumour. Neither she nor her classmates knew much about them.

That changed when armed men stormed their school and rounded up 276 girls the night before their final exams. The attackers are thought to have at first been unaware the school was full of girls. They had arrived to steal food and a brick-making machine, but finding the dormitories full, quickly decided to take captives too.

The attack still casts a long, damaging shadow over girls’ education in the country – AFP/Getty Images

Ms Maiyanga and her younger sister, Halima, were among the few Muslims kidnapped along with their mostly Christian classmates.

A recent investigation into the fate of the girls by the Murtala Muhammed Foundation found that 57 girls managed to escape in the following hours, jumping off the militants’ trucks as they drove into the forest.

But the remainder found themselves facing years of captivity or servitude in remote forest camps, and often forced into marriage with their captors.

Before this week’s release of Ms Simon, 128 girls were rescued or exchanged in deals between 2016 and 2023.

‘For every one Chibok girl, there are at least nine or 10 that nobody is speaking about’

Some 21 of those returned with a total of 34 children, which the foundation said served as “a devasting confirmation of the sexual violence and coerced marriages they endured while in captivity”.

Chioma Agwuegbo, an activist who was part of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, said: “We have heard their stories about the amount of trauma and violence they have faced. Somebody who was kidnapped 10 years ago is not returning as the same person.”

Chillingly, the foundation found that 91 out of the 276 schoolgirls remain unaccounted for.

Both Maryam and her sister were coerced into marriage and bore children. They were told their parents were dead and Boko Haram now controlled Chibok. The camps swelled with many other kidnapped children, including many boys who became child soldiers.

It was only months later when Maryam heard her father speaking on a local radio broadcast, that she realised she had been lied to and he was alive.

The mother of an abducted girl cries out during a demonstration in 2014 with others whose daughters are missing – Gbemiga Olamikan/AP

In late 2016, Maryam escaped with her son and was found by soldiers.

It was another five years before Halima could escape and the sisters were reunited. As many as a third of the 91 still missing are thought to be dead.

Hunger, disease, snake bites, childbirth and fighting between militants and the army are all thought to have claimed lives, underlining the appalling conditions the girls have endured.

Others are now thought to have been dispersed in militant camps throughout the Chad Basin region. One girl was recently discovered in Cameroon.

Maryam, like some other escaped girls, has since been enrolled for remedial classes at the country’s prestigious American University.

She tries to focus on the good things that have happened after her ordeal.

Since her escape, she has received help and support that someone from her poor farming background would never normally get.

She says the kidnapping was a test from God. “I would say yes, in some part for Boko Haram to kidnap me has upset my life and then in some part I would say is a blessing for me.

“What has happened to me is God’s plan. I have never felt bad about it. Everyone has their own destiny, God has already written what is going to happen in life, you can’t change it.”

Those working with the freed girls say the longer they were held in captivity, the harder they found it to remake their lives. Those being freed now are too old to resume their studies.

The ongoing kidnappings and the failure to hold officials to account meanwhile show that Nigeria has failed to learn from Chibok, says Dr Muhammed-Oyebode.

Many parents, particularly in northern Nigeria, were already reluctant to let their daughters study at school beyond the age of 12 or 13. The abductions have made them more wary.

She said: “It takes a mammoth effort to try to persuade parents to allow their daughters or their children to remain at school. Now what’s happening with the school abductions, it’s getting much, much more difficult. It’s a real challenge.”

She is also determined to ensure that the world does not forget the girls that are still missing, a decade on.

“We need to keep reminding the world that 90 Chibok girls are still in abduction and for every one Chibok girl, there are at least nine or 10 that nobody is speaking about,” said Dr Muhammed-Oyebode.

“Until every Chibok girl is accounted for, we should just keep the matter in the face of the world.”

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