It was an emotional ending to a heart-wrenching story. Aisha, abducted as a young woman by the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, reunited with her parents on January 30, 2018, in Borno State, Nigeria, after six long years as a captive of the merciless rebels. One witness observed, “Onlookers at the camp could not help but to join the father and daughter to shed some more tears of joy.” Twenty-seven years old and the mother of six children, Aisha would have a long road of recovery ahead, but at least now she was safe and reconciled with her family. Her ordeal was not isolated: Aisha was only one of 50 such young women unified with their loved ones on that exuberant day. Unfortunately, many others had never returned. At the time of Aisha’s poignant reunion, 1,384 agonizing days had passed since Boko Haram had abducted the Chibok schoolgirls. For the tormented families of those kidnapped girls, reunification still awaited.1 No event epitomized the dangers of the Boko Haram insurgency more than the violent extremist organization’s abduction of 276 schoolgirls from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, on the nights of April 14 and 15, 2014. The brazen and heinous act sent shock waves throughout Nigeria and garnered attention around the world. Frus- tration with the government’s inability to rescue the schoolgirls seethed into anger and reinforced perceptions of Nigeria’s impotence to quell the raging rebellion. Many critics lambasted federal officials at Abuja, argu- ing that Boko Haram operated with impunity throughout much of north- ern Nigeria. Blame mounted. The Northern Elders’ Forum, a group of powerful ruling chiefs in that region, demanded that Goodluck Jonathan, CHAPTER 1 Contemporary Security Issues in Africa
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