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Tragedy of Nigeria’s Chibok Girls continues 10 years on
STORY: Solomon Maina’s daughter, Debora, was one of the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped from their dormitory in the middle of the night by Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist militants 10 years ago. Global outrage was swift. The “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign drew support from the likes of Michelle Obama and Sylvester Stallone. Then, in 2016 and 2017, negotiations led to the highly publicized liberation of around 100 captives. Debora was not one of them. A decade on from the abduction, the world has largely forgotten the plight of the Chibok girls. But for Maina, the tragedy is ongoing. ‘’I am always thinking especially at night, I think about this my daughter, where is she now? Where is she now? Is she in a comfortable place or what kind of place that she is living in. I think this way every time.’’Abductees who have returned home have struggled to resume their lives. Some are raising children fathered by their captors. Others have waited years for funds promised by the government to continue their education. Yagana Yamani is one of the liberated captives. She waited for government funds for six years after escaping her captors. She finally asked her mother, a farmer, to help. Now 25, she is studying public health. ‘’After secondary school they said that even Masters degree, everything, they will do for us. But after that secondary school we did not see anything again, nobody called us to say this girl has graduated from secondary school, so let us take her to the university. They didn’t fulfil their promise.”Dozens freed only in the past few years are living inside a military-run rehabilitation camp with surrendered Boko Harm fighters they married in the bush. That’s according to the Murtala Muhammed Foundation, a charity that advocates for them. Three of the surviving women told Reuters that in at least five cases women who arrived at the camp unmarried have been married to surrendered fighters once there. Family members say government officials have officiated over such weddings, in an apparent effort to appease the surrendered fighters. Muhammed Maina is a program officer for the Foundation.‘’I can say they are still married like…with the contract they are holding in the forest, so they are still holding to that tie…to that bond and I don’t know, maybe after they are fully released into the society they will do a proper wedding with the blessings of their parents because I believe some of them, their parents have not yet blessed the marriage.’’The state official in charge of the rehabilitation project did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.Roughly 90 Chibok girls are still missing. Based on the accounts of former abductees, the Murtala Muhammad Foundation believes a third of those have died in captivity.(Yamani) ‘’Those that remain in the bush, they are my friends, they are my friends and I am praying maybe one day we will still see each other.”