Nigeria Declares Boko Haram Defeated; No Sign of Missing Chibok Schoolgirls

By Amy R. Connolly, UPI

Nigerians chant against the abduction of more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria. On Saturday, the country's president announced the military group was cleared from the forest where the girls are believed to be held. There is no sign of the girls. Photo by SnapShot Photos/Shutterstock

ABUJA, Nigeria, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Nigeria's military forces have driven Boko Haram extremists from their last stronghold in the Sambisa forest, but there is no sign of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the group in 2014, officials said.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in making the announcement on Saturday, said Nigerian forces would remain vigilant to fight off suicide bombers, village attacks and other independent assaults on remote areas by remnants of the extremist group.

"I was told by the Chief of Army Staff that the camp fell at about 1:35 p.m. on Friday, December 22, and that the terrorists are on the run, and no longer have a place to hide," the president said.

The group began attacks on northeastern Nigeria in 2009 and pledge allegiance to the Islamic State. The organization is believed to be holding some 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from a school in Chibok. The abductions spark an international outcry and social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

"Further efforts should be intensified to locate and free our remaining Chibok girls still in captivity," he said. "May God be with them."

First Chibok Girl Rescued From Boko Haram

Girl believed taken in Boko Haram's

Chibok raid found

She is believed to be among those captured by Boko Haram in a raid on a school, which provoked a global condemnation

By Ed Adamczyk 



The abduction by Boko Haram insurgents of female students from a Chibok, Nigeria, school in 2014 prompted global condemnation. One student was discovered, alive, by an anti-Boko Haram vigilante group. Photo by Medina Dauda/Voice of America

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, May 18 (UPI) -- One of 276 girls abducted in 2014 by the Boko Haram insurgent group in Nigeria was found and identified, activists said Wednesday.

The activists identified her as Amina Ali Nkek. She was among students, largely Christian, kidnapped by the Islamist group from their secondary school in Chibok. She was found in Nigeria's Sambisa forest, near the Cameroon border, where a member of a vigilante group fighting Boko Haram, the Civilian Joint Task Force, recognized her, the BBC reported. It added the rescue was confirmed by Nigerian women's activist Hauwa Abdu. A neighbor of the abducted girl, from her hometown of Mbalala, told the BBC she was found with a baby.

Gunmen attacked the Chibok school campus on April 14, 2014, carrying the female students off in trucks. Some escaped by jumping off the trucks and were located within hours of the attack, but 219 remained missing. The incident created a global outcry and a "Bring Back Our Girls" social media campaign, but except for occasional Boko Haram videos depicting the captives, none had been located.

The discovery of Amina would make her the first abducted student found.

Boko Haram has, since 2009, waged military operations, largely in northeastern Nigeria, to establish an Islamic caliphate. An ally of the Islamic State, it has largely been beaten back by Nigerian and international forces, who retook most of Boko Haram's captured territory.

Britain & US Reportedly Knew Location of 80 Girls Kidnapped by Boko Haram but Failed to Act

Parents of the Chibok girls hold a "Bring Back Our Girls" banner during their meeting with Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja, Nigeria, January 14, 2016. © Afolabi Sotunde Reuters

Britain and the US reportedly knew where Islamist militant group Boko Haram had taken at least 80 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls, but felt the risk was too great to launch a rescue operation, a former British diplomat has revealed.

In 2014, Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped 274 schoolgirls from a boarding school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria. Though 57 of the girls managed to escape, the remaining 217 have not been seen since a video was released showing them reciting from the Koran a month after the abduction.

Mostly Christian girls forced to convert to Islam

Former British High Commissioner to Nigeria Dr Andrew Pocock has revealed that although British and American surveillance operations spotted a large group of girls, a rescue attempt would have been too risky.

“A couple of months after the kidnapping, fly-bys and an American ‘Eye In The Sky’ spotted a group of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa forest, around a very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of vehicular movement and a large encampment,” Pocock told the Sunday Times.

“You might have rescued a few [girls] but many would have been killed. My personal fear was always about the girls not in that encampment — 80 were there, but 250 were taken, so the bulk were not there. What would have happened to them? You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t. 

“A land-based attack would have been seen coming miles away and the girls killed. 

Doesn't it get dark there at night?

Sambisa Forest

“An air-based rescue, such as flying in helicopters or Hercules, would have required large numbers and meant a significant risk to the rescuers and even more so to the girls.”

It was, and is a horrible situation. The lack of effort by anyone to rescue the girls was, and still is frustrating. One would think that with all the special forces in the world that there must have been a way to rescue them; but I certainly can't think of how it can be done even with some casualties. So, unfortunately, everyone has given up on the girls and left them to the mercy of Boko Haram, which has no mercy.

The kidnapping thrust the militant group into the spotlight and sparked an international outcry against what campaigners saw as the Nigerian government’s slow response, triggering the #BringBackOurGirls movement.

Campaigners believe the girls have been separated into small groups and taken to areas held by the militant group.

The group, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), launched military operations in 2009, since which time the insurgency has left some 20,000 people dead and forced 2.5 million to leave their homes.

Boko Haram Freed Women Tell of Captivity Horror

Women and children rescued from Boko Haram in Sambisa forest by the Nigeria
military arrive at the internally displaced people's camp in Yola on 2 May 2015
The freed women & children travelled for days on pick-up trucks to Yola camp

From BBC Africa

Former hostages held by Boko Haram militants in northern Nigeria say some fellow captives were stoned to death as the army approached to rescue them.

The women said Boko Haram fighters started pelting them when they refused to run away as the army came nearer.

A group of nearly 300 women and children was brought out of the vast Sambisa forest to a government camp.

The military says it has rescued more than 700 people in the past week in an offensive against the Islamist group. I'll take that with a large grain of salt.

The women said several were killed in the stoning, but they did not know how many.

Sambisa Forest

The survivors said that when they were initially captured, the militants had killed men and older boys in front of their families before taking women and children into the forest.

Some were forced into marriage.

They said the Islamists never let them out of their sight - not even when they went to the toilet.

"They didn't allow us to move an inch," one of the freed women, Asabe Umaru, told Reuters news agency. "We were kept in one place. We were under bondage."

The women and children were brought to a refugee camp from the vast Sambisa forest.

One woman described how they were fed just one meal a day.

"We were fed only ground dry maize in the afternoons. It was not good for human consumption," Cecilia Abel told Reuters. This led to malnutrition, disease and death.

"Every day, we witnessed the death of one of us and waited for our turn," Umaru, a 24-year-old mother of two, told Reuters.

The women and children travelled for three days on pick-up trucks from the vast Sambisa forest where they were rescued, to the camp in the city of Yola.

Hopefully it's a temporary camp and the survivors will soon be moved farther from the threat of recapture by Boko Haram.

Through interviews, officials have determined that almost all those rescued are from Gumsuri, a village near the town of Chibok, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Yola, Nigeria

It does not appear that any of those released are from the group of nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram a year ago in a mass abduction that led to worldwide protests calling for the girls' release.

Thousands have been killed in northern Nigeria since Boko Haram began its insurgency in 2009 to create an Islamic state.

In February, Nigeria's military, backed by troops from neighbouring countries, launched a major offensive against the Islamist fighters, recapturing Boko Haram territory taken in the previous year.

Nearly 300 Girls/Women Rescued from Boko Haram

This is great news, if it's true. Truth can never be assumed in Nigeria, but perhaps things are changing with a new President. We can always hope.

Nigerian Army celebrates

The Nigerian military says it has rescued 200 girls and 93 women from an area where the Islamist militant group Boko Haram is active.

No Chibok girls

However, it said the girls abducted from a school in Chibok in April 2014 were not among them.

The military said the girls and women were freed during operations ending in the seizure of four Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa Forest.

A military spokesman said they were now being interviewed.

Weapons were also seized at the camps which were taken in the latest operation, the military said.

In recent months Nigerian security forces have taken back most of the territory previously under the control of Boko Haram, the BBC's Tomi Oladipo reports from Lagos.

Last October the government said it had secured an agreement for a ceasefire and the release of the girls taken from Chibok, but Boko Haram subsequently denied this. That was under Goodluck Jonathon, who lied incessantly.

The abduction of the girls in Chibok sparked global outrage with many joining a campaign online to free them using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

Several nations including the US and China vowed to help find them and there have been reported sightings of the girls, but none has been found to date.

Meanwhile, the government of neighbouring Niger gave more details about fighting between its troops and Boko Haram on an island in Lake Chad over the weekend.

It says 28 civilians died when Boko Haram attacked Karamga island and that 46 of its troops died in the battle for the island, along with more than 150 militants. Reports in local media have given a much higher death toll for government forces.

Boko Haram's insurgency, and the army campaign against it, have killed more than 15,500 people since 2012. The violence has recently spread to neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

The Nigerian push-back appears to be pushing Boko Haram right out of the country.