A group of Nigerian women launched the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls, which became a powerful global protest attracting the support of the then US first lady, Michelle Obama, and Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai.
The then president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, received immediate offers of help from the US, Britain, France, and China.
Matthew Page, an analyst with the British foreign affairs think tank Chatham House who worked for US intelligence at the time, says: “[The kidnapping] was so egregious that basically President Obama and his top officials said we need to pull out all the stops to bring back the girls.
“There was a sense that if we don’t draw a line here—if we don’t go after Boko Haram or try to rescue these girls—what are they going to do next?”
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But the search for the Chibok girls only began a month after the abductions, as social media protests snowballed. A video in which the then Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to sell the girls at a market escalated the international outrage.
The US, UK, France, and China offered Nigeria military and intelligence support. Drones and spy planes scanned the vast Sambisa Forest, but with limited success.
However, there were underlying tensions between Nigeria and the US over human rights violations in counter-terrorism operations in the north, including the March 2014 extrajudicial executions of civilians in the Giwa barracks in Maiduguri. Analysts believed these operations were radicalising young men and pushing them into Boko Haram’s ranks.
US state department officers recall debating whether to share critical intelligence with their Nigerian counterparts, and Nigerian government officials “bristling” at what was seen as US “condescension” and overreach. In the early months of the crisis, Jonathan’s administration rejected a rescue offer by British forces, which had located the girls.
“But the search for the Chibok girls only began a month after the abductions, as social media protests snowballed.”
“They resented and rebuffed the outside interference in what they viewed as their own internal security affairs,” says Page. “And they had always been very sceptical of the reasons why the US [and] the British would want to assist them militarily.”
Negotiators who spoke to the Guardian say other concerns also shaped decisions on the viability of any military raid, including fears that the girls might be killed in the crossfire or that there might be suicide bombers.
Amid the inertia, internationally supported rescue plans lost momentum and interest waned.
A looming election in the year after Chibok finally prompted Jonathan to act. He authorised a small mediation team, run by Pascal Holliger, a negotiator with the Swiss foreign ministry, and a Nigerian lawyer, Zanna Mustapha, to negotiate with Boko Haram. Previous talks, including those facilitated by investigative journalist Ahmad Salkida, had collapsed.
Mustapha ran an organisation in Borno that helped reintegrate widows and children of Boko Haram members into society. He had represented the late founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, and had built goodwill among the militants.
The negotiations led first to the release of 21 girls, and a few months later another 82.
But negotiators say that after these two successes, the government became complacent and put little effort into further negotiations.
“We knew that dozens and dozens [of girls] had converted and had been married off, and therefore, they were kind of irrecuperable,” says Holliger.
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“Our understanding was that after they were married off, they left and went wherever their ‘husband’ went—so they were no longer part of the Chibok group per se. It was never very clear exactly how many were then remaining after that 103 had been freed.”
#BringBackOurGirls’ founders say the remaining abductees have been forgotten, as attention has shifted to more recent attacks and kidnappings in the west African country and amid fears that the girls would have become radicalised while in captivity.
When Yama returned home, she was devastated to learn that her mother had died. “I kept thinking I wouldn’t see her again,” she says. Her mother always waved her off to school, but on the day of the abduction, she seemed reluctant to let her daughter go.
Yama, who prefers not to give her age, remembers the events of April 2014 all too clearly. The militants stormed the school, pretending to be army officers. They set fire to the building and neighbouring homes and bundled the girls onto trucks. Some of the pupils escaped by jumping off the vehicles.
“I thought they just wanted to scare us so we don’t return to school again,” says Yama, because Boko Haram views western education as unIslamic.
During her captivity, Yama resisted the pressure to “marry” a Boko Haram soldier, even though it would have meant no hard labour and better food.
“Why would I marry the one who separated me from my school, my parents, and my family? How could I look him in the eyes and call him my husband? I’d rather [have died] of hunger than marry them.”
