As U.S. officials and other global players try to help recover about 223 girls kidnapped from a majority-Christian high school in Nigeria’s Borno state last month, scores of similar stories of Islamist abductions have gone unheeded.
One such case involves a Christian father of three girls from Chibok, the predominantly Christian town in Borno state where militants from the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 223 high school girls the night of April 15. The father lost his girls to kidnappers after the death of his ex-wife, who had divorced him for converting to Christianity. The death of his ex-wife led her Muslim relatives to persuade him to let their three girls visit their mother’s family home in November 2004 in order to mourn her. After a week the father, whose name is withheld for security reasons, went to collect the girls; he found a retired police officer had helped Muslim relatives take her to another house. Their father was not allowed to communicate with them in any way.
All efforts by this Christian father to rescue his children from the Muslim relatives of his wife were futile. Muslim leaders told him that because he was a Christian, an “infidel,” he could not be allowed to be with his three children.
Because of the conspiracy of some powerful Islamic forces and those in positions of power in the government of Borno state, the kidnapping case went unheard. Now, seven years after the story of the kidnapping of those children and the forceful separation from their father, we are seeing terrorists abduct mainly Christian girls in Borno on a larger scale. The Nigerian government appears helpless in the face of this tragedy.
The towns of Chibok, Gwoza and Uba provide Christians in Borno state with a Christian environment.
Since the emergence of insurgency in Borno state and other northeastern states of Nigeria, Chibok and other Christian towns and villages have come under attack from Boko Haram, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law throughout the country.
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