Schoolchildren kidnapped from an Islamic seminary three months ago walk from a van as they are reunited with their parents in Minna on August 27, 2021 after their gunmen captors freed them from forest hideouts. AFP/Representational image
Rampant kidnappings in northern Nigeria have forced children out of schools. Parents say they would rather have their children drop out of school, than get abducted by “bandits.”
The most vulnerable of this lot, however, are girls. Hausa’u Salisu, a 14-year-old girl from the northern Nigerian region, has dropped out of school after her parents didn’t allow her to attend her classes anymore.
Salisu told DW, “Before the banditry, we lived normal lives like any other person. But then they first raided the neighbouring villages before ours. We were displaced and since then, there has been no opportunity for us to return to school. Our teachers have also deserted the school for fear of being kidnapped.”
In her native village of Bakon Zabo, thousands of girls like her fear of getting abducted if they go to school.
“The constant attacks have killed off my ambition of becoming a medical doctor. Moreover, my friends and schoolmates are all displaced in different towns, cities, and villages. Some were killed while others are kept hostage by the bandits,” she added.
The case of Chibok school girls
In Nigeria, kidnapping is a perennial problem. But the abduction of over 276 Chibok school girls by Boko Haram, an Islamist militant organisation, in 2014 shook the country to its core.
Fifty-seven of these school girls managed to escape with the fates of the remaining victims unknown.
The first victim was not found until 2016.
In 2022, nearly eight years after the tragedy struck, the Nigerian army found two of the Boko Haram victims.
According to BBC, the two hostages had given birth in captivity as they were recovered with two children.
While other victims are believed to have been forced to convert to Islam and marry their abductors.
Abduction- an endemic crime problem
The Chibok school girls kidnapping wasn’t the end of the problem, it was rather part of a bigger problem in Nigeria.
In February 2021 alone, some 200 girls were kidnapped in the Northern state of Zamfara.
Over the years, nearly 11,000 schools in seven states in Northern Nigeria had to pull their shutters down due to an ongoing insurgency while about 1,000 schools have been destroyed or severely damaged.
According to UNICEF, more than 1,000 students in Nigeria have been “taken for ransom by criminal gangs in Nigeria’s northwest and central states since December 2020.”
A lucrative industry
Apparently, when an abductor takes away a child, he is not only aiming at sowing seeds of fear but making money out of it since it has for long become a lucrative business in the country.
Yehusa Getso, a kidnap ransom negotiator, told DW, “Kidnapping in Nigeria has become a lucrative business, much more than the oil business. … (I)t is expanding scope by the day.”
“They don’t care who you are. They don’t care what family you come from. They don’t care whether you are rich or poor,” he added.
The government has done little to fight jihadist insurgency and thus protect communities from kidnappings.
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