In April of 2014, more than 200 girls were kidnapped from their boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria. Some managed to escape soon after, but many remained missing over the course of two years. Over in the United States, First Lady Michelle Obama tried to raise awareness of the kidnappings with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, which the internet quickly turned into a meme and also competed for airtime with Solange/Beyoncé/Jay Z Elevator-Gate. Nothing much has changed until now, as one of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls has resurfaced with information about the others’ whereabouts.
According to the BBC, Amina Ali Nkeki was found by a vigilante group called the Civilian Joint Task Force, or JTF, created specifically to fight Boko Haram. Now 19, Nkeki was found in the Sambisa Forest near Cameroon, pregnant and with a suspected Boko Haram member. The suspect said he was Nkeki’s husband. A Chibok community chairman said that the group found her when she was gathering firewood in the forest. She had information about the other kidnapped girls: “She was saying … all the Chibok girls are still there in the Sambisa except six of them that have already died.”
BuzzFeed has more on the information Nkeki provided. They spoke to Abana Lawan, an activist whose two nieces were also kidnapped by Boko Haram:
Nkeki told the vigilantes who rescued her that roughly half of the Chibok schoolgirls were still being held in Sambisa, Lawan said. “She said as far as she is aware, maybe half of them are there now. Six of them she knows are dead. They are being kept in the bush in Sambisa, it is very heavily-fortified by Boko Haram, so we don’t know what their conditions are like,” he said.
The Sambisa Forest is a known hideout for Boko Haram, which has committed many atrocities against the kidnapped girls, including forcing them into sexual slavery and indoctrinating them as soldiers, as CBS reports. Boko Haram has also “pledged allegiance” to ISIS. The BBC says Boko Haram was originally founded to oppose Western-style education.
After her rescue, Nkeki was first reunited with her mother, before being taken to a military camp. There are 218 Chibok schoolgirls still missing.