More than 300 children kidnapped from schools in Nigeria are still in the hands of criminal gangs in Nigeria, with many of them missing for about two months. Some of those abducted are just two years old.
While many of the more than 1,000 children taken have been released, mostly after huge amounts of monies demanded as ransom have been reportedly paid, hundreds of families are still desperately and anxiously waiting for news of their children.
Some of the affected parents spoke to sources about the anxiety and distress they are experiencing and shared their thoughts about the struggles of educating children in the face of such insecurity.
Hadiza Hashim who is the mother of five children was marched at gunpoint out of the gates of an Islamic school in Tegina, Niger State, on 30 May, when 134 students were kidnapped.
The two youngest, Walid and Rahama, are just two and three years old. They were later released along with other toddlers who were too small to walk. But their three elder siblings have since remained in captive.
The eldest, Umma, is just 13 and loves watching cartoons like with her younger brothers and sisters. Her mother, afflicted with fear and anxiety has not heard from them since the kidnapping.
She recalls rushing to the school on a Sunday, the day of the abduction, after hearing gunshots. She was forced to take cover for her own safety and from her hiding place she saw dozens of armed men enter the school.
“They broke the padlock and started shouting for the children to remove their shoes, to prevent them from running away. The children started screaming for their parents.
“I saw my two-year-old carried by a man with a gun. He was shouting at the boy to shut up because he was screaming for me, his mother. I couldn’t do anything”, Mrs Hashim said.
Her two younger children are traumatised by the incident. Mrs Hashim describes how they wake up in the middle of the night screaming, afraid that they will be taken again. They keep asking where their elder sisters and brother are and why their beds remain empty.
Mrs Hashim teaches science in a nearby school, which has now been closed down because of the insecurity caused by criminal gangs. The kidnappers have reportedly asked for about $100,000 (£73,000) for the children.
Parents of the missing children are desperately trying to raise funds, but a schoolteacher’s salary in the area is less than $400 a year, making the monies demanded far above what they can afford.
She fears her children are being forgotten because they are poor.
“People have ignored what has happened because they are the children of nobodies. If they were the children of somebody, they wouldn’t be left in the wilderness for weeks with no news. It wouldn’t be allowed”, she said to sources.