SPECIAL REPORT: Chibok School Girls — 365 Days In The Vice Grip Of Boko Haram

Some of the Chibok Girls wearing the full-length hijab holding a flag reading (Video screengrab)

A Regrettable Anniversary and an Administration’s Achilles Heels

Whenever the story of the Jonathan administration is told, a little known town in northeast Nigeria would loom large for the events that occurred there on the dusk of April 14, 2014. 365 days later the story now grinds on to the bitter regret of those who could have charted a different course of history.

President Goodluck Jonathan's handling of the hostage crisis was heavily criticized, especially over his administration's failure to immediately recognize the severity of the attack and to swiftly launch a major rescue effort. Political analysts strongly cite the Jonathan Administration's defeat in last month's general election to the opposition party challenger Muhammadu Buhari may have partly been caused by his inability to contain the Islamist violence.

Boko Haram, whose name loosely translates from the Hausa language widely spoken in northern Nigeria as "Western education is forbidden", had already been suspected of committing crimes against humanity before the Chibok mass abduction focused global outrage.

Nigeria on Tuesday marks the first anniversary of Boko Haram's abduction of 219 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok, as part of a series of events planned around the world.

GRAPHITTI NEWS special report continues:

The focus of the one-year commemoration was on Nigeria's capital, Abuja, where a vigil has been held demanding the girls' immediate release almost every day since they were kidnapped.

In New York, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign said the Empire State Building would be lit in its colours of red and purple, to symbolize an end to violence against women.

Prayers, candlelit vigils and marches have been held or are planned and campaign group member Habiba Balogun said it was important to mark the anniversary.

Supporters of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign hold a placard as policewomen block supporters of the 219 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants from marching to the president's official residence in Abuja on October 14, 2014 ©Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP)

Genesis of Unwanted Story

On the night of April 14–15, 2014, 276 female students were kidnapped from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Responsibility for the kidnappings was claimed by Boko Haram, an Islamic Jihadist and terrorist organization based in northeast Nigeria.

Unknown gunmen at the time stormed the Government Secondary School in the remote town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria on the evening of April 14 last year, seizing 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams. Responsibility for the kidnappings was claimed by Boko Haram, an Islamic Jihadist and terrorist organization based in northeast Nigeria.

Fifty-seven escaped but nothing has been heard of the 219 others since May last year, when about 100 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video, dressed in Muslim attire and reciting the Koran.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has since said they have all converted to Islam and been "married off".

The mass abduction brought the brutality of the Islamist insurgency unprecedented worldwide attention and prompted a viral social media campaign demanding their immediate release.

Nigeria's government was criticized for its initial response to the crisis and was forced into accepting foreign help in the rescue effort after a groundswell of global outrage.

The military has said it knows where the girls are but has ruled out a rescue effort because of the dangers to the girls' lives.

In a new report published on Tuesday, Amnesty quoted a senior military officer as saying the girls were being held at different Boko Haram camps, including in Cameroon and possibly Chad. The Chibok abduction was one of 38 it had documented since the beginning of last year, with women and girls who escaped saying they were subject to forced labour and marriage, as well as rape.

In a report published by Amnesty International, a senior military officer as saying the girls were being held at different Boko Haram camps, including in Cameroon and possibly Chad.

The Chibok abduction was one of 38 it had documented since the beginning of last year, with women and girls who escaped saying they were subject to forced labour and marriage, as well as rape.

On October 17, 2014, hopes were raised that the 219 remaining girls might soon be released after the Nigerian army announced a truce between Boko Haram and government forces. The announcement coincided with the six-month anniversary of the girls' capture and followed a month of negotiations mediated in Saudi Arabia by Chadian president, Idriss Déby.

The announcement was met with doubt as this was not the first time the Nigerian government had claimed a breakthrough in negotiations with the Islamic militant group – it had to backtrack on a previous announcement in September after saying the girls had been released and were being held in military barracks.

A Trickle of Good News

On Monday, April 13, 2015 news report carried the story that more than 50 of the girls abducted by militant Islamists in Nigeria last year were seen alive three weeks ago.

Eyewitnesses told local and international media they sighted some of the girls in the north-eastern Gwoza town before the Boko Haram militants were driven out of there by regional forces.

The whereabouts of the remaining girls is not clear.

THE ONES THAT ESCAPED: Picture taken on May 5, 2014 shows Chibok school girls who escaped from the Boko Haram Islamists gathering to receive information from officials

Forgiving Boko Haram and Looking Forward to a Brighter Future

Twenty-one girls from Chibok who escaped Boko Haram captivity are now studying at the American University of Nigeria (AUN) in the northeastern city of Yola.

The privately-funded AUN does not look like other Nigerian universities and certainly bears little resemblance to Chibok, which even before the Islamist uprising began was a deeply impoverished town with poor roads and limited electricity supply.

Spread across a vast stretch of land on the outskirts of Yola, the campus includes an immaculate hotel, with a restaurant overlooking a pool that serves burgers and pizza, where faculty, including visiting Western professors, share sodas with their students.

"It is a beautiful environment," Deborah told AFP via university staff in an email exchange.

The Chibok girls at AUN are studying a curriculum aimed at preparing them to start a four-year undergraduate programme next year.

Deborah said her dream is to work at the United Nations "to help my community in Chibok, Nigeria and the world".

Others talk of becoming doctors or lawyers. All stress the importance of education. With degrees from the well-regarded AUN those dreams may come true.

But among the 21, the prospects feel bittersweet, as international attention returns to the plight of those still being held one year on.

Thoughts of their missing classmates are never far away and in their prayers daily, they said.

"We feel sad with the advantages we have now because so many from our hometown do not have these advantages," they added.

They also acknowledged they would almost certainly not be studying at the university had they not been kidnapped.

Mary put this conflict in starker terms: "When the insurgency struck, I was devastated but little did I know it was going to be a blessing in disguise."

AFP reports that the Chibok girls at American University of Nigeria felt united in a common goal to ensure that some good must come from last year's tragedy.

"It has been a horrible journey yet we believe that coming to American University of Nigeria is for a purpose, which is to be an instrument of positive change in our hometown," Sarah said.

"We have not been broken by the attack. We see ourselves as the people who have been chosen to make positive future changes not just in Chibok, but in our country and the world," she added.

"I forgive Boko Haram for what they have done and I pray God forgives them too," Blessing said.

Story of the Kidnappings

On the night of 14–15 April 2014, a group of militants attacked the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Nigeria.

They broke into the school, pretending to be guards, telling the girls to get out and come with them. A large number of students were taken away in trucks, possibly into the Konduga area of the Sambisa Forest where Boko Haram were known to have fortified camps. Houses in Chibok were also burned down in the incident. The school had been closed for four weeks prior to the attack due to the deteriorating security situation, but students from multiple schools had been called in to take final exams in physics.

There were 530 students from multiple villages registered for the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, although it is unclear how many were in attendance at the time of the attack. The children were aged 16 to 18 and were in their final year of school. Initial reports said 85 students had been kidnapped in the attack. Over the April 19–20 weekend, the military released a statement that said more than 100 of 129 kidnapped girls had been freed.

However, the statement was retracted, and on April 21, parents said 234 girls were missing. A number of the students escaped the kidnappers in two groups.

According to the police, approximately 276 children were taken in the attack, of whom 53 had escaped as of May 2. Other reports said that 329 girls were kidnapped, 53 had escaped and 276 were still missing.

Controversies Unlimited

The abduction of the girls has raised a lot of controversies as some people have been asking for the names of those who were kidnapped and photos of those who escaped. Some even insinuated that it’s all a scam and no girl was kidnapped.

What had in fact happened was that the whole incidence brought to fore the problem of record keeping in the country.

Also the number of girls who were kidnapped is controversial. At first it was 234, later 276 and then 300.

However, photographs of the girls who managed to escape have surfaced. The photos which were taken in front of the school, with the remains of the burned out building seen in the background, tells a dramatic story of a tiny, and isolated village, Chibok, that the world has now come to know as the site of a mass and disturbing kidnapping.

Chibok Girls: Obiageli Ezekwesili leads a campaign for government action

Dr Obiageli Ezekwezili and the #BringBackOurGirls Campaign

In the aftermath of the nearly 300 mainly Christian girls were abducted from Chibok by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Obiageli Ezekwesili and other key activists were instrumental to the start of the viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign on social media, which trended internationally.

Obiageli Ezekwesili, chartered accountant, and former public office holder is one of the arrowhead and most public face of the #BringBackOurGirls Campaign. She was a co-founder of Transparency International, serving as one of the pioneer directors of the global anti-corruption body based in Berlin, Germany. She served as Federal Minister of Solid Minerals and then as Federal Minister of Education during the second-term presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. Since then, she served as the Vice-President of the World Bank's Africa division from May 2007 to May 2012, she was replaced by Makhtar Diop.

In March 2014, she delivered a keynote speech at the national summit of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the leading opposition party in Nigeria. She criticized the many migrating governors and urged the party to " a conversation deeper than how you're going to chase (the ruling) PDP out of power".

She had on 23 April, at the opening ceremony for a UNESCO event honouring the city of Port Harcourt as the 2014 World Book Capital city]], urged Nigerians to not just tweet but actively participate in efforts to "bring back our girls".

As she prepared to board a British Airways flight to London to appear on the BBC programme Hard Talk in July 2014, she was detained by Department of State Security (DSS) (commonly called Nigeria's secret service, the SSS) who also seized her passport. She was later released that morning, making it just in time to the plane.

Some of the personalities who have supported the clamouring for the release of the abducted schoolgirls and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign include: Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai and others.

To mark the 365 days of captivity events, #BringBackOurGirls organizers thanked supporters across the world, from ordinary men, women and children to public figures such as US First Lady Michelle Obama and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The girls were "the symbol for the defence of the dignity and sanctity of human life, of the girl child, women, for all those oppressed, repressed, disadvantaged, hurting, unsafe," they said.

"We must prioritize their safe return," they said in a statement last week.

Malala, who was shot and nearly killed by the Pakistani Taliban for advocating girls' education, on Monday published an open letter to the Chibok girls, describing them as "my brave sisters".

The 17-year-old criticized Nigerian and world leaders for not doing enough to help secure their release and called the girls "my heroes".

Timeline of Significant Events – AFP

Here is a timeline of significant events since the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria a year ago on Tuesday.

- April 2014 -

- 14: 276 girls, aged from 12 to 17, are seized from the remote town of Chibok in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria.

Boko Haram gunmen storm the girls' boarding school, forcing them from their dormitories onto trucks and driving them into the bush. Fifty-seven girls manage to flee.

- 29: Parents lash out at the government's failure to rescue the girls.

- May -

- 1: Hundreds of parents, many dressed in red, protest in Chibok to demand help from the government and other countries.

- 5: Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau claims responsibility in a video statement for the mass abduction, and vows to sell the girls as slave brides.

- 7: US First Lady Michelle Obama tweets a picture of herself with a sign reading #BringBackOurGirls, joining a social media storm.

The campaign also attracts politicians, actors and other prominent public figures, such as Pakistani education activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and CNN star anchor Christiane Amanpour.

- 9: Amnesty International claims Nigeria's military was warned of the school attack but failed to take action due to lack of manpower. The military denies the allegation.

The UN Security Council strongly condemns the mass kidnappings which it says "may amount to crimes against humanity" under international law.

- 10: British, French and US experts provide help for the search operation. China and Israel also offer assistance.

- 12: Boko Haram releases a new video showing about 100 of the missing girls, alleging the teenagers have converted to Islam and will not be released until militants are freed in a prisoner exchange.

- 17: Nigeria and its neighbours Benin, Chad, Cameroon and Niger vow to work together to fight Boko Haram in what Cameroon President Paul Biya describes as a "declaration of war".

- 21: The United States deploys 80 military personnel to Chad to help regional efforts to rescue the schoolgirls.

- 26: Nigeria's highest ranking military officer, Chief of Defence Staff Alex Badeh, says they have located the missing teenagers but warns a rescue operation would put their lives at risk.

- 27: News emerges that Nigeria's former president Olusegun Obasanjo has been in talks with Boko Haram to broker a deal to release the girls.

- June -

- 12: Representatives from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin agree to strengthen joint efforts to find the schoolgirls and defeat Boko Haram.

- July -

- 18: Borno state Governor Kashim Shettima says 176 teachers have been killed and 900 schools destroyed in Borno since Boko Haram began attacking them in 2011, because they are centres of Western education

- 22: First meeting between Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and the schoolgirls' relatives.

- September -

- 25: Nigeria's police claim that one of the schoolgirls has been found but elders reject the claim.

- October -

- 14: Protesters mark six months since the abduction with a march on the Nigerian presidency but are blocked.

- 17: Nigeria's chief security spokesman Mike Omeri says no deal is in place to release the girls after the presidency says a ceasefire deal has been reached with Boko Haram.

Boko Haram chief Shekau later dismisses the ceasefire claim and says all the girls have been "married off".

- November -

- 14: Boko Haram seizes Chibok. The army recaptures it two days later.

- February 2015 -

- 8: Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai calls for global support to demand "urgent action" to release the girls, on their 300th day in captivity.

- March -

- 6: Work begins to rebuild the kidnapped girls' school in Chibok.

- 17: Nigeria's army chief admits there is "no news for now" about the girls' fate, despite military successes in recapturing towns from the insurgents.

A sign bearing the name of one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, Naomi Zakaria, hangs close to Christmas decorations on December 17, 2014, at Ikoyi, in Lagos ©Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP)

Full Special Report was prepared NAIJAGRAPHITTI BLOG Research Team using news filings from AFP, Reuters, BBC and GRAPHITTI NEWS field reports/interviews. Additional research was from Wikipedia.