While some were freed or escaped, the authorities’ waning interest and ongoing mass abductions by militants has left campaigners and families of missing pupils in despair
When her Boko Haram captors told Margret Yama she would be going home, she thought it was a trick. She and the other girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok, in north-east Nigeria’s Borno state, had been held for three years and had been taunted before about the possibility of release.
Conditions where they were being held in Sambisa Forest were harsh. Food and water were limited, the work was hard and the surveillance from the Islamist militants was suffocating. But then came the day in May 2017 when the girls were escorted to a Red Cross convoy on the edges of the forest.
