One of the most harrowing stories in The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project concerns the impact of child abduction in the northern wards of Nigeria. In areas covered by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, who are waging war on education as well as the Nigerian government, a reign of terror has been in place for about the last quarter century. The dramatic taking of more than 300 largely Christian girls from a school in Chibok in the north of Nigeria 12 years ago brought Boko Haram to the world’s attention, and its evil work continues.
The sheer scale of this crisis is difficult to comprehend. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, there have been at least 16 mass abductions of students from schools and hostels carried out by criminal and militant Islamist groups across northern Nigeria over the past decade. The United Nations reports a surge in the practice in recent years. The terrorists’ goal is twofold: the first is to take children from their families as punishment for refusal to obey their orders, and then use them as sex slaves and try to indoctrinate if not simply force them to become part of the Boko Haram movement.
