Chibok Girl, Victim of Boko Haram Mass Kidnapping, Reappears 7 Years Later

A woman abducted as a schoolgirl in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State by the terror group Boko Haram in 2014 turned herself over to the Nigerian military in recent days, Borno State Gov. Babagana Zulum said Saturday.

Gov. Zulum’s office released a statement on August 7 identifying the woman as Ruth Pagu.

“Ruth, alongside someone she was said to have married during her captivity, surrendered themselves to the Nigerian military on July 28, 2021, at a location in Bama [a town in Borno State],” according to the press release.

Pagu surrendered herself to Nigerian security officials together with “two children she bore during her marriage in captivity,” according to the Nigerian online newspaper This Day.

Gov. Zulum said he had worked alongside Nigerian federal government officials over the past ten days to contact Ruth’s family and confirm her identity before announcing the development to the public. The state leader “reunited Ruth with her overwhelmed parents” at the Borno State Government House in Maiduguri, the state capital, on August 7.

Gov. Zulum said Borno State’s government will sponsor a “rehabilitation and reintegration programme for Ruth,” including medical and psychological care, to help her adjust to regular society.

The jihadist group Boko Haram abducted about 270 mainly Christian girls from a government-run secondary school in Chibok, a town in southern Borno State, on April 14, 2014. According to Reuters, 82 of the schoolgirls “were freed in 2017 after mediation, adding to 24 who were released or found. A few others have escaped or been rescued.” Roughly 113 of the girls remain unaccounted for.

Boko Haram allegedly freed another Chibok schoolgirl abducted in April 2014 in late January, though Nigeria’s government denied any knowledge of the incident.

Halima Ali Maiyanga, 23, contacted her father via telephone on January 28 and “told him she had been rescued by the Nigerian army, but [her father] Maiyanga said he did not know her exact whereabouts or if she was alone or with more of her kidnapped former classmates,” the Thomson Reuters Foundation reported on February 1.

“We do not have any of the Chibok girls in our custody, so if they are not with us we have nothing to confirm again,” Nigerian Chief of Defense Staff Lucky Irabor told reporters on February 1, contradicting the Reuters report.

Boko Haram abducted Maiyanga alongside her sister, Maryam, according to Maryam’s account. The siblings were some of the only Muslims among the group of mainly Christian girls kidnapped from the Chibok secondary school in the spring of 2014. Boko Haram held Maryam and Halima together in captivity in the Sambisa Forest, a historic hideout for the terror group, through 2014. The sisters then reportedly each married different Boko Haram members and moved to separate parts of the forest. Maryam said her husband chose to help her leave Sambisa in 2016 “because he did not want their son to grow up in the forest.” Maryam did not inform Halima of her planned escape.

“I was afraid. I didn’t see her before I left,” she told Reuters.

Maryam said she had not seen her husband since shortly after he “accompanied her out of the forest,” as he was promptly spotted and arrested by the Nigerian military. Maryam wandered to the Gwoza district of Borno State along with her ten-month-old baby, where she was later found by Nigerian soldiers in November 2016.