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Judith is 14, sings in her church choir, dreams of becoming a lawyer and loves nothing more than offering her hairdressing skills to her neighbors.
Sophie is a year younger than her, but already intends to become a mechanical engineer despite her family gently pushing her to train as a nurse.
The girls are just two of more than 100 Nigerian children torn from Bethel Baptist High School nearly two weeks ago, rounded up by gunmen in the forest after a kidnapping raid on their dormitories.
The July 5 attack in Kaduna state, northwest Nigeria, was just the latest mass kidnapping at a school or college as gangs of quick ransom kidnappers focus on easy targets of young students.
Armed kidnappings for ransom along highways, homes and businesses are now making headlines almost daily in Africa’s most populous country.
But mass kidnappings in schools have skyrocketed this year, with nearly 1,000 students kidnapped, according to UNICEF. Most are released after negotiations, but many are still held in forest hiding places like Bethel students.
Hassana Ayuba shows a photo of her 14-year-old daughter, Judith, who was among the 140 kidnapped students. By Kola Sulaimon (AFP) The list of the missing from Bethel is heartbreaking: 121 names, the oldest 19, the youngest only 10. Most are under 15 years old.
“I am a mother and I would not want my child to be taken away for a single day. Imagine the trauma,” Hassana Ayuba, whose daughter Judith was abducted, told AFP.
“Children are harmless, children have offended no one.”
The attack devastated the tight-knit and religiously loyal community. At school, parents hold daily hour-long prayers and vigils and call on President Muhammadu Buhari to help free the children.
Outside in the schoolyard, parents picked up a pile of shoes and flip flops that their kidnapped children left behind.
“When I heard and received a phone call at 1 a.m. on that fateful day, I thought it was a joke,” said Wobia Jibrailu Ibrahim, whose youngest daughter Sophie, her real name, said has been taken.
“I can’t imagine how someone who is a parent can put these young children on foot and take them into the bush.”
shock early in the morning
Most of the children were sleeping in the school’s separate dormitories for boys and girls when the gunmen smashed a hole in the outside wall, opening fire at random as they raided inside.
Map of Nigeria locating Chikun in Kaduna State. By Cléa PÃ ‰ CULIER (AFP) In many past attacks on schools, bandits struck at night or early in the morning, taking children and students deep into the forest hiding places where they negotiated their release.
In Bethel, police said the security guards were overpowered by the gunmen, who, as usual, arrived in large numbers and heavily armed.
Most Bethel parents rushed to school early in the morning when early reports suggested 140 students had been taken away.
In the confusion, some students absent from the dormitories to take exams were initially counted among those abducted.
Police said 25 students and a teacher were rescued as security forces pursued them.
Reverend Joseph Hayab, head of the local chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, told AFP the kidnappers had come into contact with ransom demands.
They used the kidnapped prefect’s cell phone to contact the school.
In the schoolyard, parents picked up shoes and flip flops that their kidnapped children left behind. By Kola Sulaimon (AFP) “We told them there was no way we could afford such money in 50 years,” said Hayab.
Most of the children are very young, said the Reverend, whose own son, Sunday Hayab, came face to face with a gunman in his Bethel dormitory before escaping.
“You have minors facing this challenge. Can you imagine the trauma? How are they going to think about going back to school?
Hayab and school officials said they agreed to send the kidnappers rice, beans and oil to feed the students sleeping in the bush.
“When it was raining, I imagined if the rain was falling on their heads… I imagined how it felt,” Ayuba said.
“See me, I’m cold, I have to use a blanket to cover my body. What happened to my daughter now? What does she use to cover her body with? “
No to negotiations
The upsurge in kidnappings in Nigerian schools has rekindled memories of the jihadist kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok, northeastern Borno state, in 2014.
But while this case has sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls movement and celebrity support, there is no such reassurance for parents like those in the Kaduna case.
Bethel’s parents rushed to school after the first reports of the kidnapping. By Kola Sulaimon (AFP) The kidnappings are just one of the challenges facing Buhari’s security forces battling an overwhelming Islamist insurgency in the northeast and separatist tensions in parts of the south.
Shortly after the Kaduna attack, Buhari ordered security forces to work for the safe release of all kidnapping victims.
Criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, have long terrorized parts of northwest and central Nigeria, pillaging villages and stealing livestock.
Some northern state governors attempted to negotiate, offering the gunmen amnesty to disarm. But most of the peace agreements have failed.
Kaduna state governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai has been one of the most vocal in refusing any ransom, suggesting his state may have been further targeted.
But this angered the families. When Rufai’s security commissioner visited Bethel, crowds of screaming parents forced his convoy to back up and withdraw.
Most of the children were sleeping in the school’s separate dormitories for boys and girls when the gunmen smashed a hole in the outside wall. By Kola Sulaimon (AFP) “I am so worried that sometimes I run out of words to express myself,” Ibrahim said.
“But I mean the Nigerian government promised to protect lives and property, maybe we can say they failed us.”
For now, he spends his days waiting at school, barely leaving the field.
“Since then, I haven’t been back,” he told the school. “I think if I go back then I should go back with my daughter.”
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