10 Years After Chibok, Agony Of Abductions Plagues Nigeria

Sumaira FH Published April 10, 2024 | 10:00 AM

Chibok, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Apr, 2024) Ten years have passed but whenever Mary Shettima hears footsteps at the door, she thinks her kidnapped daughter has come home.

Yana Galang is waiting for her daughter too -- she keeps her clothes laid out ready for her return.

A decade after Nigeria's most infamous mass abduction, almost 100 of the 276 Chibok girls seized from their school by Islamist Boko Haram militants are still thought to be held captive.

The kidnapping sparked a huge global outcry and focused attention on victims of a bloody jihadist insurgency that has displaced more than two million people.

But the anniversary of the April 14, 2014 attack comes amid a resurgence of large-scale abductions in Nigeria, with no end in sight to the conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people in the northeast.

Sitting in the quiet town of Chibok shaded by baobab trees, mothers of the missing girls told AFP of their pain hearing other children had been seized.

"I think of their parents and break down crying," said Shettima, whose abducted daughter Margaret turns 29 this year.

Victims fear the world has forgotten the crisis.

"I feel completely weak knowing others are still going through this," said Asabe, who was taken from the school aged 14 and freed after three years.

"When will it be safe again?" she asked, holding back tears.