Last month, 137 families in Kuriga in Nigeria’s Kaduna State breathed a collective sigh of relief as their sons and daughters returned home after over two weeks in terrorist captivity.
The children were abducted from their school on 7 March when armed assailants descended on the premises just as classes were about to commence. The school reported that 287 students were taken; however Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani has since attempted to dismiss the figure as being a ‘figment of someone’s imagination’, despite initially citing the same number himself.
Several questions emerge from this: what is being done to confirm that all of the students have indeed been freed? What about the thousands of other individuals who have been abducted by terrorist groups in recent years? And finally, how can this still be happening a decade after mass kidnappings in Nigeria first landed on the international agenda?
Continue reading “Ten years since the abduction of the Chibok Girls, the Nigerian government must finally protect vulnerable communities”
