It all began much like a surreal fib. When on April 14,2014, the news filtered in that mulish gunmen of the dreaded terrorist group, Boko Haram, had invaded the Government Girls Secondary School,Chibok town, Borno State, and abducted 276 students, it read like one of the phantom scenes in James Bond thrillers. It was novel. So, it sounded incredulous.
Fifty-seven of the abducted school girls, most of them in the pristine stage of life, between 16 and 18 years, however, escaped immediately from their captors by jumping off the trucks conveying them to an unknown destination. The fate of the remaining 219 Chibok girls in captivity eventually became a subject of intense international campaign.
The rigorous global campaign for their release by civil society organizations and subterranean negotiations by agents of the Federal Government paid off three years after, precisely May 20, 2017, when 82 of the girls were rescued and reunited with their families at a colourful ceremony in Abuja. Till date, 98 of the Chibok girls remain in captivity.
It was a totally despicable and unsettling development. And the Chibok episode appeared to have opened the floodgate to a vista of mass kidnappings in the gangland of insurgency and banditry. Boko Haram insurgents whose violent campaigns are more pronounced in the northeast of Nigeria— Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states— have since intensified their kidnapping orgy, targeting more of women and school girls.
Amnesty International estimated in 2015 that no less than 2,000 women and children had been kidnapped by the group since the Chibok episode. Most of the girls were most times forced into sexual slavery. They were often raped, killed or forced into “marriages” with the Islamic militants.
It is as if the Boko Haram fighters passed the baton of mass abductions to a new set of armed gangs,known as bandits. These gangs, a horrific legacy of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, have seized control of large swathes of territories in the northwest of the country, invading schools and communities to carry out mass kidnappings and killings.
Worst hit by the bandits’ murderous activities are Kaduna, Zamfara and Katsina states. Some of the gangs have, however, moved to the Federal Capital Territory(FCT) and down South, holed up in forests— some have begun to inch towards the city centres—where they also kidnap people for ransom.
The gangs, who are Fulani nomads and mostly foreigners, seize farmlands and mining sites and compel the locals to work for them. While Boko Haram insurgents kidnap mainly for sexual perversion and sometimes use their victims as bargaining chips to free some of their members in the security net, the latter-day armed gangs abduct principally for ransom.
Mass abductions have unfortunately become almost interminable and intractable because of the allure of ransom and the acquiescence of desperate families, petrified communities and even some state governments(even though they do not admit it) to paying. This access to easy money has made the atrocious heist a very lucrative criminal adventure for the hundreds of armed gangs holed up in the forests of northwest, the main epicenter of their gangland.
However, our bother concerning this devilish campaign of these mulish goons is the fate and future of their school girl victims. Until the new administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu revivified the anti-insurgency and anti-banditry military campaign, leading to the killings of many of the terrorists and bandit leaders lately, the security agencies have become almost dilatory towards the campaign. It must, however, be acknowledged that the military before now gave a good account of themselves. But it appeared fatigue understandably set in, since they have been battling the ubiquitous daredevils on many fronts since 2010 when Boko Haram became violent in their operations.
The not-so-firm campaign, coupled with the victims’ families’ desperation to pay ransom, might have drawn the armed gangs into a climate of impunity, as they became emboldened to undertake more and more mass abductions.
One of the most sensational mass kidnappings by bandits after the Chibok episode was the kidnapping of 287 students, many of them girls, from the Government Secondary School in Kuriga, Kaduna on March 7, 2024. It is, in fact, the most recent mass kidnapping. The kidnappers reportedly demanded N1billion($600,000). But President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said no farthing would be paid as ransom. They were eventually rescued last weekend. However, security agencies said it was 137(76 girls and 61 boys) that were kidnapped, not 287 as earlier reported.
Two days later, gunmen suspected to be bandits invaded an Islamic boarding school in Gudan Bakusa village in Sokoto State and kidnapped 15 children while they were sleeping.
Another sensational mass abduction had occurred earlier on February 29,2024 when Boko Haram insurgents seized over 200 internally displaced persons(IDP), many of them women and girls,in the Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State. Reports said the victims broke one of the camp’s rules by venturing beyond the safety of the trenches of Ngala in search of firewood. So far, only nine of them had been rescued by security forces so far.
Again, on March 12, 2024, bandits attacked Kajuru community in Kaduna State and whisked away 61 persons. The gunmen returned to the same community six days later and kidnapped 87 more people.
On March 28, 2022, the bandits attacked an Abuja-Kaduna passenger train and abducted 60 passengers, an audacious move that stirred an intense national and international passion. The train was bombed twice before the armed gang rained bullets on it, killing eight persons and injuring 20 others. The victims were released piecemeal before the last batch of 23, including a Pakistani, were freed on October 5,2022.
On Friday, December 11, 2020, bandits also attacked an all- boys Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, and kidnapped 303 students. But they were all rescued a week later. Eight days after the attack on the Kankara school, precisely December 19, 2020, gunmen also kidnapped over 80 students of an Islamic school in Dandume, Katsina State. But the victims were quickly rescued after an intense gun duel, according to the Police.
The gunmen were not done yet.
On February 26, 2021, gunmen believed to be bandits seized the largest haul of 317 kidnap victims so far from the Government Girls Science Secondary School, Jangebe, Zamfara State. They also attacked Federal Government College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Igabi Local Government Area(LGA) of Kaduna State and took 39 students(23 girls and 16 boys). They were rescued in batches between April5&8 and May5, 2021.
It was the turn of Greenfield University in Kasarami village, Chikun LGA, Kaduna State on April 20, 2021 to ‘host’ the implacable gunmen who seized 20 students and two staff. Three of the victims were killed three days later, while the rest were rescued on May29, 2021. The parents claimed they paid a ransom of N150million and eight brand new motorcycles to the bandits.
Earlier, on February 18, 2018, another mass abduction that made international headlines occurred when Boko Haram fighters attacked Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi town, Yobe State, and kidnapped 110 students. Many residents who had seen the insurgents thought they were security forces because they came in camouflaged vehicles. All the kidnapped students, except Leah Sharibu, were freed about a month later, precisely March 21, 2018, after an international campaign and intense negotiations with the gunmen by the Federal Government. The popular belief was that Leah Sharibu was not rescued because she refused to convert to Islam. Till date, she remains in captivity and she was said to be nursing a baby the last time she was sighted in incarceration.
In most of these abductions, the school girls, mostly puny and fragile, have been at the receiving end of emotional discomfiture. While Boko Haram militants subject their victims to sexual assault and forced “marriages”, it is not clear what the bandits do to their female victims beyond keeping them for ransom, but merely subjecting them to the trauma of being held menacingly at gunpoint and sometimes being beaten mercilessly is harrowing enough.
In fact, at a point in their campaign, the Boko Haram insurgents were using some of the girls in their net as suicide bombers to blow up targeted locations along with the girls, who were already festooned with explosives! Thank God, that has stopped now. These are punishing and nightmarish experiences that can for life alter the psyche of the suicide bombers’ colleagues who witnessed this kind of horrendous act.
The most atrocious damage being done to these school girls, which is the parents’ bugbear, is the deleterious effects of incessant abductions on their educational life. Naturally, even before the advent of insurgency and banditry, states in Northern Nigeria already had the lowest rates of literacy and a high rate of out-of-school children. Mass abductions have worsened the disequilibrium.
It is ineluctable that the problem is already dampening the efforts of the government and development partners to encourage parents to send their children to school. Indeed, not only are children now sore afraid to venture into school due to the incessant kidnappings of school age children, parents too are becoming more reluctant to allow even those who are willing to go to school. This is a major setback to basic education in Northern Nigeria.
According to Amnesty International, threats of further attacks by armed gangs have led to the shutdown of over 600 schools in the region. More are still being closed down due to the lingering security maelstrom. It is, therefore, imperative that the insurgents and bandits holding the nation to ransom be totally decimated.
The invigoration of the military campaign towards this end is a welcome development. President Tinubu’s declamation to treat kidnappers as terrorists, so the armed forces could get rid of them is highly gratifying. That is how it should be. Once there is a will, there is a way. The commander-in-chief has spoken. Let our military bear its fang,show its true might and stop these ragtag armies of miscreants disturbing our population.
Again, out of the 780 children said to have been abducted for ransom from the schools that have been attacked, 61 of them remain in captivity. Meanwhile, 98 of the Chibok girls are yet to return home 10 years after being kidnapped. They all must be rescued by all means to reunite with their families.
