It has been four years since the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the remote town of Chibok in North Eastern Nigeria and activists in the capital Abuja are still holding a daily sit out for those held captive.
Memories of that evening of April 14th 2014 still vivid among the families and friends of the victims in attack that has now become an enduring symbol of the Islamist insurgency in the region.
On Friday night, about 100 people attended a vigil in Nigeria’s biggest city Lagos under a busy flyover whose pillars are now adorned with brightly painted murals of the missing girls.
‘’We are here to show (the) government that we are still missing our sisters,” Zakaria Galang, a brother of one of the students who is yet to return, told AFP.
Since 2016, 107 girls have been found, released or escaped as part of a government deal with Boko Haram and the administration has said back-channel talks are ongoing for further releases and a possible end to the wider conflict.
Earlier this week UNICEF released a report that about 1000 children had been verified as abducted in Northeast Nigeria since 2013 many of whom they turned to child soldiers or forced into marriages.
For activist Habiba Balogun, her only hope is for the government to negotiate to bring what she refers to as a “nightmare’’ to an end.
Nigerian president Muhammad Buhari has also pledged to the Chibok girls’ parents and their daughters that they ’’will never be forgotten or abandoned to their fate’’ despite the time that had passed.
Buhari further added that the return of so many students from Dapchi and Chibok “should give confidence that all hope is not lost” and showed the government was “doing its very best. We will continue to persist, and the parents should please not give up. Don’t give up hope of seeing our daughters back home again.”
Meanwhile, the International Crisis Group said the copycat abduction in Dapchi showed more needed to be done to protect schoolchildren in the region.
“The abductions illustrate that Boko Haram remains a menace to swathes of northeast Nigeria,” it added in a report published on Thursday.
