Bring back our girls

FILE- In this Thursday, May. 19, 2016 file photo, Amina Ali, the rescue Chibok school girl, sits during a meeting with Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential palace in Abuja, Nigeria. Nigeria's Bring Back Our Girls movement demanded Wednesday, June. 22, 2016 that the government provide news of the only one of 219 kidnapped schoolgirls to escape the clutches of the Boko Haram extremist group. (AP Photo/Azeez Akunleyan, File) — FILE- In this Thursday, May. 19, 2016 file photo, Amina Ali, the rescue Chibok school girl, sits during a meeting with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential palace in Abuja, Nigeria. Nigeria’s Bring Back Our Girls movement demanded Wednesday, June. 22, 2016 that the government provide news of the only one of 219 kidnapped schoolgirls to escape the clutches of the Boko Haram extremist group. (AP Photo/Azeez Akunleyan, File)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – Nigeria’s Bring Back Our Girls movement and family members are demanding that the government provide news of the only schoolgirl among 219 kidnapped to escape the clutches of Boko Haram Islamic extremists.

“Even this morning people came to my house asking if I had been able to find out her whereabouts. It’s outrageous! Some people are crying! We don’t understand why the government wants to keep her family away,” Yakubu Nkeki, an uncle of Amina Ali Nkeki, told The Associated Press by telephone on Thursday.

In a statement Wednesday night marking the 800th day of the mass abduction that outraged the world, Bring Back Our Girls also asked what the government is doing to try to rescue the other girls.

Hunters found Ali on May 17, wandering on the fringes of Boko Haram’s Sambisa Forest stronghold with her 4-month-old baby and the father of the child, a Boko Haram fighter who she said helped her escape.

Ali was flown to the capital, Abuja, two days after her escape for a televised meeting at which President Muhammadu Buhari promised her the best care and rehabilitation.The Bring Back Our Girls movement says no one has seen her since, not even leaders of the Chibok community where the girls were kidnapped. It says Ali has said some of the girls have died but most are alive, raising hopes they could still be rescued.

“It is now more than one month since Ms. Ali was rescued and her avowed restoration process by the federal government as pledged by the president began. Having given a reasonable length of time, our movement has a number of concerns regarding Amina Ali as well as the rest of our Chibok girls still in the terrorist enclave,” said the statement signed by the movement’s founders Aisha Yesufu and Oby Ezekwesili.

Government and military officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It had been presumed that Ali would be debriefed by state security agents for information that could lead to a rescue operation, and that she would receive psychosocial care.

Nigeria’s military has freed thousands of Boko Haram captives this year, but none of the girls kidnapped from a remote boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014.

The Associated Press has been unable to establish the whereabouts of some other freed Boko Haram captives taken for alleged debriefing and counseling by the office of the National Security Adviser.

Ali’s uncle said the last time he saw her and her mother, Binta Nkeki, along with baby Safiyah was in the office of the National Security Adviser at the presidential villa on May 19.

“We have had no credible information since, though I am told they are in the hands of the government,” he said.

Bring Back Our Girls also demanded the government prosecute the father of Ali’s child, Mohammed Hayyatu, for abduction and rape. The military has said he appeared to be a Boko Haram commander and was being held for interrogation.

“We are extremely disappointed with the evident lull in rescue actions and lack of any progress report,” the movement said.

Chibok (Nigeria) (AFP) – There’s not much left of the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 teenagers in the dead of night nearly two years ago.

Even the word “girls” on the school sign outside has been painted over in black — hidden from the world, just like the 219 students who are still missing.

Up the dusty track and beyond the heavy wrought-iron gates, soldiers stand guard with assault rifles, although there are few buildings and no people to protect.

Only the peeling light-green walls of the school’s main school building remain. Metal beams that supported the roof lie rusting. Rough grass pokes through shattered concrete.

The government of Nigeria’s former president Goodluck Jonathan announced shortly before last year’s election that rebuilding work had begun at the school.

But apart from piles of breeze blocks, there’s no evidence of any construction. The sprawling site is silent apart from the sound of cicadas and gusts of hot wind through the desert scrub.

Ayuba Alamson Chibok steps through the rubble where the girls’ dormitories once stood, picking up a bed frame from the scorched earth — one of the few signs the site was once inhabited.

“If the government wanted to do something, let them call the contractor… to put somebody on the ground,” the town elder told AFP, his voice rising in anger.

“Education here in Chibok has really come to zero level. This is the only school we have in Chibok and it has been destroyed.”

– Abandoned –

The second anniversary of the mass kidnapping on April 14 will bring renewed attention to the remote town in southern Borno state, which was little known until two years ago but is now synonomous with the brutal conflict.

Parents of the abducted girls plan to gather at the school on the day itself to pray for their safe return, said Yakubu Nkeki, from a support group helping those left behind.

But 16 fathers and two mothers will not be there, he said. They have either died or are now among the estimated 20,000 killed in the nearly seven-year Islamist insurgency.

Others live with the physical and psychological effects of the disappearances. High blood pressure and stomach ulcers are common, he said.

Yet despite the global outrage online at the kidnapping and promises of action, many people in Chibok say they feel abandoned.

“Nothing has been done,” said Nkeki, a primary school teacher, questioning why nearby towns recently liberated from Boko Haram have since been able to re-open schools.

The Government Girls Secondary School was the only state-run school in Chibok but it has been shut since the kidnapping. Calls for a boys school have come to nothing, he said.

“Really, Boko Haram has achieved its aim by saying they don’t want Western education,” he added.

– Hardship –

In the town, life goes on as best it can. Upturned bicycles are repaired in the street, hawkers trade groundnuts from see-through plastic buckets and boys push wheelbarrows full of tart oranges.

The single main street, like the dirt road into and out of the town, is unpaved. Every vehicle kicks up choking dust. Electricity cables hang to the ground from damaged poles.

In January, three suicide bombers killed 13 people in Chibok. At the mosque, worshippers, including young children, are now screened outside for explosives.

Vigilantes assisting the military stand guard with single-shot, home-made muskets in a town that has been largely inaccessible because of insecurity.

“We have hardship,” admitted Buluma Dawa, a 56-year-old bookseller. “There is no light, no water, no road and security-wise it’s not enough for us in Chibok.”

Dawa and others are at a loss to explain why, suggesting the state government has no interest in developing rural areas.

“We hope that on the two years’ anniversary (of the kidnapping), we pray that people will remember Chibok because… nothing is improving at all…

“We have a lot of children living at home without doing anything… They will suffer, there is nothing else.

“If there is no education the poor people cannot even achieve.”

– Waiting –

Some of the missing schoolgirls’ parents can be found in Mbalala, a 10-minute drive from Chibok through an area still known for Boko Haram activity.

There’s little movement in the market place, only the sound of children playing, the bleating of goats and an imam’s sermon over the loudspeakers of the mosque.

Young girls in blue and white hijabs sit on piles of mud bricks; boys wash a goat tethered to a pole while others fetch water from a well, pouring it into plastic buckets.

Yawale Dunya is among the men sitting mostly silently on benches in the shade of cracked mud-brick houses or cross-legged playing cards.

The 41-year-old farmer has been able to do little else since his 15-year-old daughter Hawa was abducted. His fingers pick distractedly at prayer beads.

Military successes against the insurgents have kept his hopes alive of Hawa’s return and he runs through the scenario repeatedly in his head.

“When I see my daughter coming back to me I will feel very much joy in my heart,” he said.

“All the small sickness and other things will disappear and I will be very happy in my life.”

Video appears to show some of Nigeria’s kidnapped girls alive

Bring back our school: anger in Chibok over lack of education

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