On April 14, 2014, members of Boko Haram kidnapped 276 female students in the city in northeastern Nigeria. Of the 276 young girls kidnapped 10 years ago from the high school in Chibok commune (Borno State, Nigeria), nearly 150 were released or escaped.
According to information provided in 2018 by Ahmad Salkida, a Nigerian journalist who participated in negotiations with Boko Haram, the other girls are dead or still detained. But the figures are sometimes “doctored” by the authorities in Nigeria, warns Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, research director at the Research Institute for Development. A real atmosphere of “fear” and “suspicion” is plaguing Boko Haram today, according to the specialist in armed conflicts in English-speaking Africa south of the Sahara, says Pérousse de MontClos. It is now known that the fighters were not originally planning such a kidnapping, but were focused on seizing supplies that had probably been left in a nearby military post.