22,000 Nigerians Missing Since Boko Haram Crisis Began: Red Cross

* It’s the highest number of missing persons registered with
the organisation in any country, most of them children.

At least 22,000 people are missing in Nigeria due to the
decade-long conflict with the Boko Haram group, the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

In a statement, ICRC President Peter Maurer said nearly 60
percent of those missing were children and that it was the highest
number of missing persons registered with the organisation in any
country.

“They were minors when they went missing, meaning thousands of
parents don’t know where their children are and if they are alive
or dead,” he said on Thursday at the end of his five-day trip to
Nigeria.

“Every parent’s worst nightmare is not knowing where their child
is. This is the tragic reality for thousands of Nigerian
parents.”

Nigeria is faced with multiple conflicts, including attacks by
the Boko Haram and the frequent clashes between the nomadic herders
and the farmers.

Boko Haram – whose name roughly translates to “Western education
is forbidden” – wants to establish an Islamic state based on a
strict interpretation of the Islamic law.

The United Nations estimates that more than 27,000 people have
been killed and an estimated two million others displaced in
Nigeria’s northeast because of the violence by the Boko Haram.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria’s central states, clashes between farmers
and nomadic herders over dwindling arable land have also killed
thousands and displaced tens of thousands.

‘We have no hope’
In 2015, the Nigerian military launched “Operation Lafiya Dole” to
force the Boko Haram out of the country’s northeast.

But it is the families of those missing, mainly in the urban
centres of Borno state in Nigeria’s northeast, who are forced to
deal with the trauma.

“My father is traumatised. He goes out looking for my brother
from time to time, hoping he will be found,” 43-year-old Noami
Abwaku told Al Jazeera about her brother Yerima Abwaku, a civil
servant who disappeared on October 30, 2015.

She said her 53-year-old brother worked in a government school
in Maiduguri, the epicentre of Boko Haram attacks.

“At this point, we have no hope because many like Yerima went
missing around that time and they’ve not been found,” Noami Abwaku
said. “Three of my colleagues in office also went in the same
period.”

Boko Haram still occupies large expanses of the Nigerian
countryside, mainly in the northeast and has a stronghold around
the Lake Chad region bordering Cameroon and Niger.

Analyst Cheta Nwanze told Al Jazeera that the number of missing
persons is not surprising and blamed it on a “notoriously lax”
administration.

“It is a logical consequence of the fact that we consistently
report not the names of the people missing, but just the numbers.
To solve this, we must improve the accountability system,” he
said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

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