Approximately 234 Nigerian school girls between the ages of 16 to 18 years old are still missing.
It’s been two weeks since the pupils of the Government Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State were seized at gunpoint in the night and carted off in busses, trucks and vans, surrounded by armed militants on motorcycles. At least one guard was killed in the raid. The girls had just finished their final physics exams. Though no organization has stepped forward to claim the aggressive action, many sources believe the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi group Boko Haram to be responsible (not to be confused with the 60’s rock group Procol Harum)– a name which translates roughly to “western education is sin.”
Though the search goes on, family members are beginning to lose hope. The same organization has been known to kill teachers and students just as well as kidnap them. Some family members have become so desperate they’ve taken up their own meager arms to ride out in search of their lost nieces and daughters and search where the military has failed, only to be cautioned away by locals who warn them that their sticks, stones and machetes would be no match for the militants’ firepower.
One farmer who embarked on such a journey stated:
Even my wife was begging to come as she is so disturbed she hasn’t been able to eat anything. Our daughter Hauwa is only 16 years old and she has been missing for 11 days now.
BBC correspondent Will Ross stated on air:
I’ve spoken to one father who told me they feel thoroughly let down by the government. When I said the military put out a statement saying they are intensifying the search he said, ‘They haven’t shown us they have done anything yet, I’ll have to see it.‘
The northeastern section of Nigeria has been under state emergency for a year due to Boko Haram running a campaign against not only schools, but markets, mosques, churches, as well as other populated, public places for the last five years. The Government Girls’ Secondary School was the only school open due to the hostile environment at the time of the girls’ abduction. That same day, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for killing more than 75 commuters several hundred miles south, outside the capital. The organization is responsible for more than 1,500 murders in the last year alone, according to Amnesty International.
Unfortunately, the search for the missing girls has been muddled with misinformation. Initial reports claimed only a hundred or so girls were missing and that the Nigerian military had recovered nearly all of them, in addition to capturing one of the acting terrorists. Eventually those reports were retracted and the number of missing girls climbed to 234. Those who managed to free themselves (around two dozen) did so of their own accord, through their own courage and cunning, rather than military intervention.
One lucky survive recounted a bit of her capture:
They forced us into trucks, buses and vans, some of which were carrying food stuffs and petrol. They left with us in a convoy into the bush. A group of motorcyclists flanked the convoy to ensure none of us escaped….
At one point, one of the trucks broke down and the girls on that vehicle were transferred to another one. The broken down truck was set on fire. When another vehicle broke down and the men tried to fix it, some of us jumped out of the vehicles and ran into the bush. We later found our way back to Chibok.
Many of those who escaped are now struggling with survivors’ guilt.
Threats have been made against the girls’ lives (and their parents’ lives) if searches are not called off. The Nigerian government claims its priority is to rescue the girls. Meanwhile, #BringBackOurGirls has begun to trend on Twitter as a call for action.
Dylan Hock is a writer, professor, videographer and social activist. He earned an MFA in Writing from Naropa University in 2000 and has been an Occupier since Oct., 2011, both nationally and locally in Michigan. He is published in a number of little magazines and has an essay on the muzzling of Ezra Pound included in the anthology Star Power: The Impact Of Branded Celebrity due out July of 2014 by Praeger. He is also a contributing writer for Addicting Info and Green Action News.
Edited by DH.