Newspaper headlines reflect the abductions of girls and others in Nigeria’s northern states. Credit: Hussain Wahab/IPS

By Hussain Wahab
ABUJA, Nov 28 2025 (IPS)

On the morning of 17 November 2025, darkness cloaked Maga town in the Danko/Wasagu Local Government Area, Kebbi State, until gunfire shattered the silence. It was around 4 am when armed attackers stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, firing into the air to terrify residents before heading to the staff quarters. There, they killed two, including Hassan Yakubu, the school’s Chief Security Officer and then abducted 26 female students.

Two later escaped, said Halima Bande, the state’s commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education. This brazen raid came less than 72 hours after the killing of Brigadier-General Musa Uba in an ambush by the insurgents.

A rescue mission by Nigerian soldiers to intervene in Kebbi’s abduction was itself ambushed and injured by the insurgents, heightening fears that such violence is spiraling beyond the reach of conventional security responses.

Since then, 24 girls have been released, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu announced.

Abubakar Fakai, whose nine nieces are among the 26 abducted schoolgirls, told IPS that his family and the entire community have been plunged into unbearable grief.

A father of four of the kidnapped girls, Ilyasu Fakai, is still in shock. Almost every household in the close-knit village has been affected. For more than a week they received no credible information about the girls’ condition or whereabouts, Abubakar said.

“Every night we try to sleep, but we can’t, because we keep thinking of the girls lying somewhere on bare ground, scared and cold. These are teenage girls, and we fear for their dignity and their lives. We just want the government to rescue them quickly and reunite them with us. This pain is too much for our community to bear,” he told IPS.

The Kebbi raid was one of several mass abductions that occurred within days of each other.

At least 402 people, mainly schoolchildren, have been kidnapped in four states in the north-central region—Niger, Kebbi, Kwara and Borno—since 17 November, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.

Call to Authorities

“We are shocked at the recent surge in mass abductions in north-central Nigeria,” OHCHR Spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said in Geneva.

“We urge the Nigerian authorities—at all levels—to take all lawful measures to ensure such vile attacks are halted and to hold those responsible to account.”

A day after the Kebbi incident, a church was attacked in Eruku, Kwara; two were killed and about 38 abducted during a live church session. State Gov. AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, in a statement, said President Bola Tinubu deployed an additional 900 troops to the community.

In Niger State, a St. Mary’s School in Papiri was also attacked on Friday, November 21, and 303 boys and girls, plus 12 teachers, were abducted; only 50 are said to have escaped as of Sunday, November 23. This number surpasses the number of girls kidnapped in Chibok, prompting an international “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign.

The same day, militants launched another deadly attack in Borno State. The list is not exhaustive, underscoring how Nigeria’s overlapping insurgency and banditry crises are converging in devastating ways.

Insurgency a Threat to Food Security

The rise in insurgent attacks is threatening regional stability and causing a spike in hunger, according to the the World Food Programme (WFP)

The latest analysis finds nearly 35 million people are projected to face severe food insecurity during the 2026 lean season from June to August—the highest number ever recorded in the country.

Insurgent attacks have intensified this year, the UN agency said.

Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, reportedly carried out its first attack in Nigeria last month, while the insurgent group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) is apparently seeking to expand across the Sahel region.

“Communities are under severe pressure from repeated attacks and economic stress,” said David Stevenson, WFP Country Director and Representative in Nigeria.

“If we can’t keep families fed and food insecurity at bay, growing desperation could fuel increased instability with insurgent groups exploiting hunger to expand their influence, creating a security threat that extends across West Africa and beyond.”

Human-rights activist Omoyele Sowore drew national attention to the lawlessness in a viral post.

A Long Shadow Over Schools

Human-rights activist Omoyele Sowore drew national attention to the lawlessness in a viral post.

These recent incidents are not isolated—they are part of a deepening national crisis that has targeted schools for more than a decade. According to Save the Children, 1,683, schoolchildren have been kidnapped in Nigeria from April 2014 through December 2022. UNICEF similarly reports that over 1,680 schoolchildren have been abducted within that period and according to a SBM report, 4,722 people were abducted and N2.57 billion (about USD 1.7 million) was paid to kidnappers as ransom between July 2024 and June 2025.

These statistics reflect both past challenges and an enduring failure—despite Nigeria’s endorsement of the Safe Schools Declaration, the protections promised on paper have not reached many of its most vulnerable schools.

Experts and analysts say these incidents reflect a broader model: criminal gangs and insurgents are increasingly seeing schoolchildren as high-value targets. This surge underscores a chilling truth: educational institutions, especially in rural and poorly guarded areas, are no longer safe havens. They are strategic targets.

“This has now become a national and international discussion, giving Nigeria a very bad name,” said Colonel Abdullahi Gwandu, a conflict expert, in an interview with IPS, criticizing the government’s failure to anticipate such attacks and the slack competency of security forces, putting not only education but every sphere of the nation in mayhem.

Trauma, Trust, and Retreat

In the wake of the Kebbi abduction, fear rippled across communities. Uncertain of their children’s safety, parents in Maga and nearby areas rushed to withdraw their daughters from schools. Community leaders responded with grief and prayer. Maga’s traditional ruler announced a special prayer gathering, calling on God to bring the girls home safely.

Habibat Muhammad, a youth advocate, said it concerned her that these trends put the education of girls at risk.

“When you train a girl child, you train a nation but how do you train a nation when girls who should be sitting in class are dragged out of their hostels by people who have learned to exploit government negligence?”

She said many rural girls’ schools lack basic security infrastructure: trained guards, perimeter fencing, early-warning systems and proper lighting. She argued that this absence of protection contrasts sharply with the layered security given to public officials or financial institutions. “Education must be treated as a national priority, not a soft target,” she told IPS.

Why the State Can’t Seem to Stop Attacks

Security experts and community voices agree that the Kebbi attack exposed major systemic flaws. Gwandu described the incident as a stark reminder of how fragile rural school security has become. He noted that the deliberate killing of a school security officer signals a shift in tactics: attackers are now targeting authority figures in addition to students. He stressed the need for a more intelligence-driven strategy and urged the military to take firmer action. “

The Northwest Division, headquartered in Sokoto, should be given full authority and resources to respond quickly and aggressively by combining human intelligence with AI to track bandits and their informants while addressing poverty and poor education to reduce criminal recruitment, Gwandu said.

Beyond immediate security, he argues, the government must tackle root causes: poverty, lack of education, and widespread youth unemployment make banditry and kidnapping more appealing for disenfranchised young people.

The Cost Beyond the Kidnapping

Dr. Shadi Sabeh, an educationist and the vice-chairman of the Iconic University, argues that closing these wounds must be central to Nigeria’s recovery strategy.

“We have to be there for our children. Guidance and counselling are almost absent in our education system.” he calls for trauma-informed curricula, peer support groups, bravery training, and sustained mental health services within schools to help students cope, heal, and reclaim their futures. This highlights the need to keep youth productive.

“A hungry man is an angry man and an idle hand is a devil’s workshop.

Jeariogbe Islamiyyah Adedoyin, Vice President of the School of Physical Sciences, added a more personal plea.

“No child should ever have to go through something like that just to get an education. Our girls deserve to learn without fear. She said when schools are no longer safe, the future of the nation is at risk.”

What the Government Is Doing—And Why It’s Not Enough

In response to the crisis, authorities have initiated both immediate and longer-term measures. Short-term responses include deployment of troops to high-risk regions like Kebbi and Niger, search-and-rescue operations involving military, police, and local vigilantes, closure of some schools deemed vulnerable and public condemnation from religious and political leaders.

However, high levels of poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy, and lack of parental care make marginalized youth vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups and defeat these efforts.

A legal expert, Waliu Olaitan Wahab, told IPS that the roots of insecurity in northern Nigeria run far deeper than the activities of Boko Haram, herdsmen, or bandit gangs. He described the crisis as multifaceted, arguing that decades of neglect by northern elites have created a system where millions of children grow up without support, opportunity, or protection—making them easy targets for recruitment.

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A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

“They forcefully took us away and kept us like prisoners,” Lydia Musa, a former Boko Haram captive who was abducted at the age of 14 during an attack on her village in Gwoza, in Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State, tells IPS. Musa and two other underaged girls were captured and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters in spite of their protests that they were too young to marry.

“You must marry whether you like it or not they told us as they pointed guns at us,” the now 16-year-old girl recalls.

Boko Haram’s violation of the rights of women and children paints a larger picture of human trafficking, forced marriages and enslavement in Nigeria.

As the extremist group enters the 10th year of its insurgency, it remains formidable enough to abduct women and children at will, continuing “to prey on women and girls as spoils of war,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria country researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This West African nation has the highest incidence of Africans being trafficked through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The north and north eastern parts of the country, where Boko Haram is active, have high incidences of forced marriages, while across the country there are frequent cases of young girls being ‘traded’ as modern day slaves.

The group, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is reputed to be among the five-deadliest terror groups in the world. It has been involved in a violent campaign for strict Islamic rule in north east Nigeria and in parts of the neighbouring states of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. More than 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. Hundreds of women and children have been abducted since the group’s insurgency started. But Boko Haram’s most well-known abduction occurred in April 2014, when 276 female students were taken away from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State.

The abduction started a global campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

A few months after the Chibok girls were abducted, Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would sell them. “I am the one who captured all those girls and I will sell all of them,” he said in an online video in which he justified human slavery. “Slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.”

Consequently there have been other mass abductions of children in the region since the Chibok incident. In March 2015, Boko Haram fighters abducted more than 300 children from Zanna Mobarti Primary School in Damasak; while 116 female students from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, were abducted in February 2018 during an attack on the school.

“The way Boko Haram hold women and children against their will is by itself a form of slavery,” Rotimi Olawale of the group Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) tells IPS. The group is involved in a powerful campaign for the speedy and effective search and rescue of the Chibok girls and other abducted women and children.

Olawale says Boko Haram is also using captives, like the Chibok girls, as “valuable bargaining chips” to collect ransoms and secure the release of their members held in Nigerian prisons. While many of the Chibok girls are still missing five years after their abduction, others escaped or were released by Boko Haram in deals made with the Nigerian government. But 112 girls are reportedly still missing.

In an apparent reference to Boko Haram, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry and committed other grave violations against children.

Accounts by others who escaped from Boko Haram’s captivity confirm this.

Ali Mohammed is also a former Boko Haram captive. He tells IPS that while in captivity he saw Boko Haram members using captive girls as sex slaves. “At night they freely go to where the girls are kept to pick them for sex,” he explains.

Another former Boko Haram captive who preferred to be called Halima says male children born through sexual slavery are being breed to be the new generation of Boko Haram fighters. Halima, who gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl), tells IPS how Boko Haram members always celebrate when a baby boy is born in their camps.

“Once they realise it is a male baby they will start shooting their guns into the air in happy mood saying that a new leader has been born,” she says.

“After I delivered the babies, they carried the male in jubilation and were chatting Allah Akbar, in contrast, they did not show any joy with the female, they did not even touch her.”

Boko Haram’s abduction of young persons are in part aimed at turning them into fighters. UNICEF says between 2013 and 2017 more than 3,500 children, most of whom were aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups who used them in the armed conflict in north east Nigeria. UNICEF says the true figures are likely to be higher because its figures are only of those cases that have been verified.

Musa confirms that while in captivity she saw abducted boys being trained to be Boko Haram fighters. “In the mornings, they normally teach them how to shoot guns and carry out attacks,” she says, adding that some of the boys were just 10 years old.

Boko Haram is also known to train children to become suicide bombers. A UNICEF report in 2017, says between January and August of that year, 83 children, mainly girls, were used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers. The UN’s children agency said this figure was four times higher than it was for 2016.

Attempts to use legislation to address such abuses as child marriage, sexual abuse, trafficking and abduction have failed in the past. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act as a legal documentation to protect children from these abuses. Currently the country’s constitution does not have a minimum age of marriage. Though the Child Rights Act set the marriageable age as 18, it failed in part because a number of Nigeria’s 36 states refused to domesticate the law.

“It was also a failure in states where it was adopted because it only existed on paper and was not enforced,” Betty Abah, a women and children’s rights activist, tells IPS.

In 2016, Nigeria’s male-dominated senate voted against a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. The bill in part prohibits trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children. The bill, which also prohibits forced marriage, set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

According to UNICEF, 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18. Some of the lawmakers who voted against the bill cited such grounds as their religion which permitted underaged marriage.

“It sends a very bad signal that we have a long way to go if those who are supposed to make laws to protect women and children feel these laws are not necessary,” Abah says.

In the meantime, Musa, may have fled the captivity of Boko Haram but she is too terrified to return home. She now lives in Maiduguri, which is also in Borno State and about 130 kms from Gwoza.

She tells IPS she is home sick. “I am always praying for the crisis to end so that I can return home, for now I cant go back because I don’t want to risk being taken away by Boko Haram again.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Bring Back Our Girls campaign co-founder Saudatu Mahdi with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. Credit: Donor Direct Action.

By Lindah Mogeni
NEW YORK, Dec 16 2016 (IPS)

The Bring Back Our Girls Campaign has experienced some successes but must now overcome the challenge of hope fatigue, Bring Back Our Girls campaign co-founder Saudatu Mahdi told IPS in a recent interview.

“There is the challenge of hope fatigue, especially when the expected timelines are not achieved and financial streams are low…however, the campaign remains faithful in its advocacy,”Mahdi told IPS.

However Mahdi also noted that, “Bring Back Our Girls has been one of the longest-standing campaigns in Nigeria and has been largely sustained by the horrendous nature of what the girls have gone through.”

On April 14th 2014, 276 female students in a boarding secondary school in Chibok, Northern Nigeria, were loaded into trucks at gunpoint and kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists in the dead of the night.

The kidnappings sparked an international outrage which led to the foundation of the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign – an homage to the social media hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

Mahdi who is also the Secretary-General of Nigerian women’s rights group, Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) appealed for an end to the rampant violence against Nigerian women and girls and the release of the girls currently in Boko Haram’s captivity.

Fifty-seven of the kidnapped girls managed to escape in June 2014, two months after their capture. Two years later, in May 2016, one of the kidnapped girls was found clutching a four-month year old baby in the outskirts of Sambisa forest in Northeastern Nigeria- rumored to be one of Boko Haram’s strongholds.

More recently, 21 of the kidnapped girls, along with a twenty-month old baby born to one of the girls, were released by Boko Haram on October 12th this year after negotiations with the Nigerian government finally bore fruit.

Asked whether there are any plans in motion to rehabilitate the released Chibok girls, Mahdi told IPS that the Nigerian government and philanthropic organizations have been involved in “forming rehabilitation plans which specifically target survivors of Boko Haram.”

Mahdi also told IPS that, “I can confirm that the 21 recently released girls are currently in a government hospital where their health is being looked after and they have undergone a full regime of both psycho-social and medical examinations.”

“There is a dire need for the rehabilitation and reintegration of all girls as a responsibility of the Nigerian government,” said Mahdi.

“The recent release of some girls is only part of the deal and we have to be careful. There is hope and we can build on hope. There is still a window of opportunity that we will see all girls released…” said Mahdi at a Donor Direct Action panel discussion held in New York on December 8th.

Currently, the Bring Back Our Girls campaign is pressuring the Nigerian government to release results from rescue operations, said Mahdi.

Also speaking at the panel, prominent global women’s group’s supporters, Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, stressed the urgency of standing in solidarity with women’s rights groups by helping increase their funding.

“It is not about one person passing on the light but all of us being able to shine our own lights,” said Steinem.

Hundreds of people gathered at Union Square in New York City in May 2014 to demand the release of some 230 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria. International pressure helped lead to the release of 23, but most remain in captivity. Credit: Michael Fleshman/cc by 2.0

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, Nov 11 2016 (IPS)

The Nigerian military announced the rescue of a missing Chibok schoolgirl Saturday, bringing to 23 the number freed since Boko Haram seized 219 girls from a secondary school in the country’s northeast in April 2014.

The latest rescue came about a month after the Islamist group released 21 girls in a deal with the government. Earlier in May, Amina Ali became the first amongst the missing girls to be rescued.Boko Haram has also abducted hundreds of men, women and children. But the abduction of the Chibok girls drew international attention, galvanized with the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

The releases riveted people around the world, and the government has flaunted them as political coups. But they have also rekindled demands from activists campaigning for greater government action for the release of nearly 200 girls still in captivity.

“It’s day 933 of abduction; 197 girls (are) still in captivity under your watch Mr. President @MBuhari. Time to bring them home,” Maureen Kabrik, a member of the BringBackOurGirls group, tweeted to President Muhammadu Buhari days after 21 of the girls were released early October.

The BringBackOurGirls group, set up to publicise the plight of the girls amidst international outrage in 2014, announced it would release on November 14 a report of a six-week monitoring of the government’s effort to rescue the girls.

The group accuses President Muhammadu Buhari of not doing enough to rescue the girls despite his electoral promise a year ago. Alongside other campaigners, the group has held protest marches in the capital Abuja for months.

Between August and September, it staged 78-hourly marches on the presidential villa and threatened to increase the pace to 48-hours in November. Now, it is promising to do even more to press for the girls’ release.

“Our obligation to demand (the) rescue of the rest 197 of our Chibok Girls is ever stronger,” said former Education Minister and World Bank executive Oby Ezekwesili, who co-founded the group.

Boko Haram, which has waged a seven-year insurgency aimed at carving out an Islamic caliphate in the northeast, seized more than 276 girls from their school in April 2014. The group opposes Western education and has killed over 20,000 people, among them teachers.

In September, U.S.-based 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative and the Stefanus Foundation said in a report that 611 teachers died as a result of the crisis since 2009. The report said 19,000 teachers had been displaced, 1,500 schools closed down, and 950,000 children denied the opportunity of accessing education.

Boko Haram has also abducted hundreds of men, women and children. But the abduction of the Chibok girls drew international attention, galvanized with the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

President Buhari campaigned on the promise of fighting corruption, defeating Boko Haram and rescuing the Chibok girls. But rights campaigners have long criticised the administration’s pace at getting the girls home.

In September, under pressure from activists, the government released details of its attempt to swap the girls with Boko Haram fighters. Information Minister Lai Mohammed said talks began barely two months after President Buhari took office in May 2015.

He said the swap deal failed to go through at the last hour even after Buhari assented to the “difficult decision” of freeing the militants. The president believed that “the overall release of these girls remains paramount and sacrosanct,” Mohammed said.

An attempt to restart the process in December 2015 also failed, in part due to a leadership crisis in Boko Haram’s ranks.

Cold comfort

After 21 girls were released in October in a deal brokered by the Red Cross and the Swiss government, the Nigerian government assured that some 83 more would be freed “soon”. Presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu said talks had reached an advanced stage.

But as weeks passed by with the girls still in captivity, the demands have intensified, and the initial euphoria has gradually given way to disenchantment.

“It is cold comfort that 197 of the girls are still in the den of their abductors more than 900 days after,” the country’s Guardian newspaper said in an editorial on Nov. 1. “No one can be fully relieved of the terrible bruises inflicted on the girls, their parents, this nation and its foreign friends, until all the girls return.”

The BringBackOurGirls group said while there has been some improvement, the government still must do more to rescue all the girls.

Daily, the group circulates on social media figures reminding the government how long the girls have been in captivity, and how long they have been held under the Buhari presidency.

“Day 939 of #ChibokGirls‘ abduction. 196 still in captivity. Day 529 under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch,” it posted on Twitter on Nov. 7.

The government says it is not relenting. “Whatever it takes to get the Boko Haram situation under control, we will do it because there are still more girls in captivity,” Information Minister Mohammed said last week.

The government has also undertaken full responsibility for the girls rescued so far. “Aside from rescuing them, we are assuming the responsibility for their personal, educational and professional goals and ambitions in life,” President Buhari said while receiving the 21 girls. “These dear daughters of ours have seen the worst that the world has to offer.”

Experts warn that the girls face stigmatisation following their ordeal at the hands of Boko Haram.

“Frequently, returning to their families and communities is the beginning of a new ordeal for the girls, as the sexual violence they have suffered often results in stigmatization,” said a statement by the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

But the presidency denied the girls had been abused or raped during their during two-and-a-half years’ captivity.

On Wednesday, Thompson Reuters Foundation quoted a confidential report prepared based on interviews with the girls as saying that while they were all encouraged to marry the militants, they were neither forced into doing so or converting to Islam.

Reuters Foundation reported that 61 had married Boko Haram militants, while those of them who did not agree to marry were used as servants.

Security analysts have also warned about the possibility of the girls being indoctrinated.

“We are concerned by reports that dozens of the girls may have been indoctrinated and do not wish to return to Chibok,” said Cheta Nwanze of SBM Intelligence, which provides analysis of the Nigerian socio-political and economic situation. “We are optimistic the second batch of the release would provide more intelligence about the condition of the remaining girls.”

A meeting session of the #BringBackOurGirls daily protest campaigners at Maitama Amusement Park, Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Credit: Ini Ekott/IPS

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

The search for the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamist extremist group, Boko Haram, could be hampered by a series of policy and information flip-flops by the government, the latest one of them being a public disagreement on policy between the president and the military chief.

The extremist group abducted close to 300 school girls nearly two months ago on Apr. 14 in Chibok, northern Nigeria. The abduction triggered a global campaign and a massive social media movement under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. The United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel have sent experts to Nigeria to assist in rescuing the girls.“If both sides say no force, no negotiation, that means no one is willing to do something. What we would like to see is all options are on the table- including negotiations." -- Ubong Ben, of Facts and Figures

Indeed the lack of clear policy could be the reason why on Monday Jun. 9, news broke here that suspected Boko Haram members seized at least 20 women from the Garkin Fulani community, a nomadic settlement near Chibok.

Details of the latest raid remain sketchy with neither the Nigerian military nor the government commenting on the attack. But local vigilantes and witnesses say armed men loaded the women onto trucks and drove away on Thursday, Jun. 5.

With the initial global spotlight on the Apr. 14 abduction receding, the government also appears to be back-peddling on its rescue effort.

But perhaps what could be considered the first government blunder came when the military claimed to have freed all but eight of the girls just two days after the Apr. 14 kidnapping. That claim was retracted after the head of the school, from where the girls were abducted, complained.

Since then, the government and local officials have faltered over the actual number of abducted girls, with the figure climbing from less than 100 to close to 300.

To date, the actual number is not certain, leaving many to use in-approximate descriptions like “more than 200 or nearly 300”.

However, on May 26 the army announced that it knew where the first group of abducted school girls were. But in the last week there have been no official updates from the government, and no news of breakthroughs. Officials merely say “efforts are ongoing, the government is doing all it can to free the girls.”

But this week critics accused the military is spending valuable time targeting the media as it seized newspapers and accused the press of undermining national security through its reporting of the abductions. The military, however, says its siege on the media is a “security operation”, and denies it has anything to do with news content.

But an apparent split between the president and the military chief over the choice tactics for the release of the girls could also be hampering the efforts to rescue them. This apparent split is seen here as underscoring a longstanding lack of a coherent strategy against a deadly group that has killed more than 12,000 over five years, according to President Goodluck Jonathan. 

The president has branded the group the “Al-Qaeda of West Africa”.

Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014. They called on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

Jibrin Ibrahim, a political scientist and a leading Nigerian civil rights activist who leads the now famous #BringBackOurGirls daily protest in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, handed a grim warning about the conflicting remarks by Jonathan and his military chief, Alex Badeh, about whether to use force or negotiations with Boko Haram.

Boko Haram has offered to swap the girls in exchange for hundreds of its detained fighters; and has threatened to sell or marry off the girls if the government does not respond.

Jonathan vowed this month in a major televised speech to free the girls kidnapped in April.

But both sides must agree immediately on a tactic, said Ibrahim.

“If the military says they won’t use force, and the president says he has ruled out the negotiations with the group, then that is a dead-end because those are the only two options on the table,” Ibrahim told IPS. Even the #BringBackOurGirls daily protest itself was handled badly by the government when on Jun. 2, the FCT Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu, banned the protests. However, the ban was overruled a day later by Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar.

Ibrahim said he would personally prefer negotiations with Boko Haram, an option that Jonathan has long ruled out.

Previous attempts by the military to conduct rescue efforts in other abduction cases have ended on a bloody note, with one involving the killing of an Italian and a Briton by their captors.

“The danger in the double speak is that it may not only send wrong signals to the terrorist group but may also push them into taking more vicious steps in their bid to bring the government to its knees,” Eric Ojo, of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa, told IPS.

Driven by a religious fundamentalist ideology, and an ambition to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram, whose name literally translates as “Education is Forbidden”, took the girls into captivity from a secondary school in Chibok where they were preparing for a final examination.

Nigeria’s senate president, two ministers, and another senior information official, have openly disagreed with the government’s line of action of either to swap detainees with Boko Haram, or to stick to the use of force.

Special Duties Minister Taminu Turaki, and the director general of the National Orientation Agency, Mike Omeri, have said that the government was prepared for talks.

Jonathan himself was quoted by Britain’s Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds, as saying downright he would not consider a prisoner swap or negotiation with Boko Haram.

He was supported by senate president David Mark, the country’s number three, and Interior Minister Abba Moro.

However, government sources said secret negotiations that would have resulted in the exchange of detainees by both sides, failed to go through last month after the talks were called off by Jonathan.

Critics view the conflicting positions as typical of a government accused of lacking a response to a deadly group that threatens the country’s soul.

“The government must keep its house in order,” Ubong Ben, of Facts and Figures, a Nigerian accountability outfit, told IPS.

Ibrahim said the disagreement and dilly-dallying could prove harmful to the abducted girls.

“If both sides say no force, no negotiation, that means no one is willing to do something. What we would like to see is all options are on the table- including negotiations,” he said.

But some Nigerians analysts also believe the government may deliberately be distorting its information to confuse Boko Haram, while secretly exploring all options.

“It is a possible game plan,” said Joseph Fayeye of the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies.

“What is certain is that the government will also consider diplomatic steps that are not known to the public,” he told IPS.

Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014. They called on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, May 16 2014 (IPS)

Tomorrow Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan will meet other heads of state at a security summit in Paris, France to focus on ways of combatting Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group which kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April.

But questions have been raised about whether the abductions and the deaths of thousands could have been avoided had Jonathan acted decisively three years ago. Jonathan has drawn criticism from lawmakers and human rights groups, who accuse him of being partisan in handling the security threat.

Boko Haram translates to “Western education is forbidden”, which is the central creed that has driven its members to attack school after school. And while girls attending school are often abducted, boys have been slaughtered for pursuing their education.

In one of the most horrifying attacks yet, in late February the group’s fighters murdered nearly 50 students in a secondary school in Yobe state, one of the three most-affected states in Nigeria’s northeast. Rights group Amnesty International says that in 2014 alone, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in what appears to be the bloodiest year since the brutal insurgency began in 2009.

But the mass kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14, brought international attention to the terror campaign in this West African nation.

A massive social media movement under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has lasted weeks, and the United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel have sent experts to Nigeria to assist in rescuing the girls.

A massive social media campaign under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has lasted weeks. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for their release. Courtesy: UNICEF

But Jonathan’s response to the kidnapping was slow. The president’s supporters and the ruling People’s Democratic Party have routinely dismissed the terrorist attacks as the handiwork of the president’s opponents — mainly from the predominately Muslim north — who they say are out to derail Jonathan from seeking reelection next year.

The president’s supporters speak of the attacks as being confined to a remote part of the country, implying they can be ignored.

And Jonathan has not dispelled these sentiments, indeed, he appears to back them with his inaction. The Chibok abduction came hours after a car bomb by Boko Haram killed at least 75 people in the capital, Abuja.

A day after the incident, the president travelled to north-western Kano state for a political rally, where he was photographed singing and dancing.

Many others feel he only acted weeks later after the abduction of the girls came to the attention of the international media.

But many feel Jonathan should have acted three years and 5,000 deaths ago.

On Christmas Day 2011, Boko Haram militants killed at least 44 worshippers by detonating a car bomb outside a church in Abuja. At the time, Jonathan vowed to respond forcefully against Boko Haram, which had already murdered nearly 1,000 people.

Jonathan said the organisation had grown “cancerous, and Nigeria being the body, they want to kill it,” he said, vowing to “crush” group within months.

But the extremist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, buoyed by the government’s apparent failure to end the budding insurgency at the time, boasted that his group would continue targeting symbols of state.

Boko Haram’s latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Ayo Bello

A list of targets, motivated by the group’s ambition of creating an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, came under under attack. Three years on, Shekau’s threat, rather than Jonathan’s, has held largely true.

The group has attacked schools, churches and villages, causing increasing devastation. It has slaughtered students and kidnapped scores over the years. Its most infamous attack is now the kidnapping of the 276 schoolgirls in Chibok.

This week, Nigeria’s House of Representatives approved Jonathan’s request to extend emergency rule in the country’s states most affected by the conflict for another six months.

Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states have already been under a state of emergency for more than a year now. The Senate is expected to vote on the request Tuesday, May 20. Both houses have to agree for the decision to be effective.

But Jonathan’s request for this extension of the emergency rule has drawn criticisms from lawmakers.

The current state of emergency has done little to deter Boko Haram in these states and in fact the group has escalated its terror campaign. It culminated in daring attacks on military bases, two car bombs at a busy bus terminal in Abuja, and several raids on schools and villages.

The failure of the military to stop the attacks is primarily a result of its poor human rights record, which has alienated the local population, according to William Miles, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, U.S.

“Too many of the rank-and-file members of the Nigerian military view northeastern Nigeria as alien territory, with a potentially hostile local community,” Miles, who is also a member of West African Research Association, at the African Studies Centre at Boston University, tells IPS.

“Without a good rapport between the local populace and the national military, it is too difficult to obtain the most important assets in combatting domestic terrorism — local informants and a functional intelligence network,” he points out.

Indeed, international rights groups have accused the Nigerian military of conducting summary executions.

Amnesty International said the Nigerian security forces executed 600 Boko Haram detainees when the sect’s fighters stormed a military facility in Maiduguri in April. The military said it had no choice.

Beyond the human rights concerns, the military has also come under criticism for being poorly equipped and for its dwindling morale.

While the military budget has now increased, years of underfunding the military to avoid coups has taken on a troubling dimension. On Wednesday, May 14, troops opened fire on the motorcade of a senior military commander, Ahmed Mohammed.

Mohammed was the General Officer Commanding Borno state’s 7 Division, which was recently created to fight Boko Haram.

They blamed him for the deaths of at least four soldiers killed in an ambush by suspected Boko Haram militants while patrolling Chibok. Local reports say the soldiers said they were compelled to travel through the area at night without proper armour. Mohammed has since been redeployed.

The bombing of the U.N. building in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, claimed 23 lives and wounded 81 people on Aug. 26, 2011. Credit: Chris Ewokor/IPS

The Nigerian government has struggled to contain Boko Haram’s attacks to this country as the extremist group has attacked neighbouring countries, including Cameroon. It has led to fears of instability in parts of neighbouring Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Ghana and even Central African Republic.

“The destabilisation of any nation in the West African sub-region is a threat to the security of all the other surrounding nations,” Ghana’s President John Mahama said after the Chibok kidnappings.

Mahama has pledged a robust response to Boko Haram, through the Economic Community of West African States, a regional body.

This week, Cameroonian officials told IPS that the Central African nation, which borders Nigeria’s northeast, has been infiltrated by Boko Haram.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance said nearly 300,000 people in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states – 70 percent of them women and children – have fled their homes since early 2013. About 60,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger since May 2013, according to U.N. Refugee Agency.

Despite the mounting challenges, the Nigerian government will win the war with the broadened foreign support, says Christian Ichite, a research fellow at Abuja’s National Defence College.

“Efficient kinetic measures against insurgents are driven by intelligence and technology from professionals,” Ichite tells IPS.

“In this respect, Nigeria has requested for and is receiving assistance from the U.S., U.K, France, China, Israel and the Eurpoean Union.

“There is therefore renewed hope that Nigeria will succeed in dealing with this menace.”