On the night of April 14, 276 teenage girls were kidnapped from the Government Secondary School from Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. The attacks were carried out by the Nigerian terrorist group, Boko Haram, which aims to end western influence in Nigeria, and re-institute Sharia law.
Boko Haram was created in 2002, and since then has never stopped being a thorn in the Nigerian government’s side. Boko Haram started targeting schools in 2010, and the attacks have prevented at least ten thousand students from receiving an education. In addition, Boko Haram has been known for kidnapping girls and turning them into slaves.
In 2013, the Nigerian government declared a state of emergency in Borno State, where Chibok is located. The group has stepped up their attacks since the beginning of 2014, with the most major attack prior to the kidnappings being on the military barracks in Giwa.
The school had actually been closed in the four weeks prior to the kidnappings due to the all the attacks. However, 530 students had been at the secondary school to write their physics final exams. The school was lightly guarded by military troops, but the insurgents were able to overpower them and break into the school, killing one soldier in the process. Though the military had four hours advance warning on the attack, there were no reinforcements in the area and the military had already been overextended.
It is not entirely clear what condition the girls are in, and what Boko Haram plans to do with them. Conflicting stories are coming from the region, with some reports saying that the girls were forced to convert to Islam and being sold as brides, and other reports saying that the insurgents are holding them hostage, offering their freedom in exchange for releasing captured insurgents.
The kidnappings have shocked the world, refocusing the attention of the media on the instability in Nigeria and the plight of the civilians and innocents who are caught in the crossfire. The United States have already sent a team of experts to help locate the kidnapped girls, and Israel, the United Kingdom, and France have said they would do the same. However, the Nigerian government has been sluggish in their response to the situation, and blame has been shifted back and forth between the government and the parents, with the parents saying the government was not using all of their resources, and the government saying that the parents had not been forthcoming with information to aid the search. The government has also been criticized for even allowing the attack to happen in the first place, and as a result the Nigerian government has been labelled ineffective and incompetent.
Information coming from Nigeria is naturally murky, and because of this, many details involving the kidnappings are not clear. What is known for sure is that the terrorist insurgency in Nigeria has been growing in power, and that their actions have devastated the families of 276 schoolgirls.
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