The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria

by Helon Habila

Overview

On the night of April 14, 2014, 276 girls from the Chibok Secondary School in northern Nigeria were kidnapped by the deadly terrorist group Boko Haram.

Fifty-seven of them escaped over the next few months, but most were never heard from again.

On April 14, 2014, 276 girls from the Chibok Secondary School in northern Nigeria were kidnapped by Boko Haram, the world's deadliest terrorist group. Most were never heard from again. Acclaimed Nigerian novelist Helon Habila, who grew up in northern Nigeria, returned to Chibok and gained intimate access to the families of the kidnapped to offer a devastating account of this tragedy that stunned the world. With compassion and deep understanding of historical context, Habila tells the stories of the girls and the anguish of their parents; chronicles the rise of Boko Haram and the Nigerian government's inept response; and captures the indifference of the media and the international community whose attention has moved on.

Employing a fiction writer’s sensibility and a journalist’s curiosity, The Chibok Girls provides poignant portraits of everyday Nigerians whose lives have been transformed by extremist forces. Habila illuminates the long history of colonialism—and unmasks cultural and religious dynamics—that gave rise to the conflicts that have ravaged the region to this day.

“In rescuing the Chibok tragedy from ‘mythic status,’ Habila’s unusual primer quietly yet powerfully revives the call to take notice.” —The Atlantic

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780997126464
Publisher:	Columbia Global Reports
Publication date:	12/05/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	124
Sales rank:	1,140,802
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria and is the author of three novels, Oil on Water, Measuring Time, and Waiting for an Angel. His fiction, poems and short stories have won many honors and awards, including the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel (Africa Section), the Virginia Library Foundation's fiction award, and the Windham-Campbell Prize. Habila's short story, "The Hotel Malogo" won the Emily Balch Prize. Oil on Water, which deals with environmental pollution in the oil rich Niger Delta, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (2011), the Orion Book Award (2012), and the PEN/Open Book Award (2012).

He worked in Lagos as a journalist before moving to England in 2002. He co-edited the British Council's anthology, New Writing 14 and edited The Granta Book of African Short Story in 2011. He is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at George Mason Universityand lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.

Editorial Reviews

10/03/2016
Poet and novelist Habila (Oil on Water) explores the rise of the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram and the fallout after their 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls from a government-sponsored school. It is a dispatch from the front lines, as Habila travels to the town of Chibok, where the landscape is riddled with burned tanks and bullet holes, and vigilantes pick up the slack for the inadequate and ineffectual military. He chronicles the founding of Boko Haram, their early clashes with authorities, and their subsequent reign of terror, providing a nuanced window into the psyche of Nigerian Islamic extremism. He also traces the Nigerian government’s history of “political assassinations, palace coups, and electoral thuggery.” In Chibok, Habila meets with a pastor whose two nieces were taken and with the mother of another victim, the latter offering a chilling account of the night of the kidnapping. In nearby Maiduguri, Habila reports on conditions in refugee camps for those displaced by Boko Haram’s attacks. The book culminates in a gripping interview with three girls who escaped. As a native Nigerian, Habila incorporates vital background knowledge on the situation in Chibok and the surrounding area; as a poet, he adds sensitivity and eloquence, capturing the raw emotion of the wounded town. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

This is a controlled, lucid and deeply felt account of Boko Haram’s unconsionable kidnappings. This is essential to understanding the tragedy of the Chibok girls.” —Dave Eggers, author of What is the What and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“In rescuing the Chibok tragedy from ‘mythic status,’ Habila’s unusual primer quietly yet powerfully revives the call to take notice.” —The Atlantic

“Habila’s account is a fascinating portrait of a community stricken by tragedy and ill-served by successive governments in Abuja." —Financial Times

“In this brief yet powerful book, novelist Helon Habila returns to Nigeria, the country of his birth, to explore the kidnapping in April 2014 of 276 girls from a secondary school in Chibok, in the northeastern state of Borno.... A memorable portrait of individual resilience in a divided, strife-torn nation.^” —The Guardian

“Habila offers a short history of Boko Haram, illuminating the regional, religious and ethnic divisions that help explain its rise. But the author is most concerned with the pain the terrorist organization has inflicted on the country.... Perhaps making sense of these horrific kidnappings is just as futile as trying to understand a random, fatal bus crash. The best Habila can offer us is his compelling portrait of a troubled land.” —Jenny Rogers, Washington Post

"There’s nothing more informative about one of Africa’s most troubled states in the past half dozen years than Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls. The slim little book was written by the award-winning Nigerian novelist who was born in the area and—although he lives in the U.S.—returned to the war-torn northeastern area of his country, where he conducted interviews (including with three of the escaped abducted girls) and, then, placed his conclusions within the context of Nigeria’s post-Independence history. The result is a damning picture of Nigeria’s failed leadership, ethnic tensions, and squandered oil wealth, one of the saddest stories of post-colonialism and—in a disturbing way—a warning for other nations (including the United States) to get their act together." —Counterpunch

“Habila, who grew up in northern Nigeria, returned to Chibok, spoke to their families and wrote an account the tragedy, telling the girls’ stories and capturing the indifference of the media and the international community.” —The Leonard Lopate Show

“The story at its core is Habila’s, showing a man removed from his mother country, now returned to see the source of an international horror.... Helon Habila provides a harrowing account of the damage Boko Haram has done to Nigeria.” — Shelf Awareness

“This engaging book reminds us of how ordinary the horror of war can be.” —Kwame Dawes, Emmy award-winning poet, actor, musician and author of Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius

“Nigerian-born poet and novelist Habila seeks to remind the global community of the plight of the kidnapped girls....an informative primer on Nigeria’s history of Islamist conflict and a passionate testimonial on behalf of the 218 Chibok girls still missing.“ —Kirkus Reviews

“A dispatch from the front lines.... Habila incorporates vital background knowledge on the situation in Chibok and the surrounding area; as a poet, he adds sensitivity and eloquence, capturing the raw emotion of the wounded town.” —Publishers Weekly

“Helon Habila tells us a heartbreaking story about lives lost in anguish. His book will spread the pain and sorrow of the vanquished Chibok women, not to keep us crying, but to energize us to be part of a path that leads to the rescue.” —Toyin Falola, Past President, African Studies Association, and Kluge Chair of the Countries and Cultures of the South, Library of Congress

“Of great interest to readers who have not forgotten #BRINGBACKOURGIRLS.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

12/01/2016
Nigerian novelist and poet Habila (creative writing, George Mason Univ.; Waiting for an Angel) returned to northeastern Nigeria to follow up on and rekindle interest in the story that all-too-briefly caught the world's attention in 2014: the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the radical Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. Habila demonstrates how groups in Nigeria's "Middle Belt" were never treated as or came to consider themselves part of a Nigerian nation. In this brief book, he introduces readers to individuals struggling to live where slavery under Hausa-Fulani Muslim rule was little altered during British colonialism and only superficially changed under a half century of independent Nigerian kleptocracy and more recent state-imposed sharia law. Habila encounters government soldiers lazing at checkpoints, women waiting in line for food distribution in ravaged villages, and teachers of the lost girls who come alive in his description. This entry would have been improved with the addition of a detailed topographic map, but the Further Reading section includes a number of titles and Internet sources that provide more information about Boko Haram territory. VERDICT Of great interest to readers who have not forgotten #BRINGBACKOURGIRLS.—Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

Library Journal

2016-10-06
An empathetic inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls from the Chibok Secondary School in Nigeria by the Islamist group Boko Haram.Nigerian-born poet and novelist Habila (Oil on Water, 2010, etc.) seeks to remind the global community of the plight of the kidnapped girls, most still presumed to be held somewhere in Boko Haram’s forested strongholds in northern Nigeria or in the terrorist group’s bolt-holes in neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. The author is less interested in assigning blame to former president Goodluck Jonathan’s halfhearted counterterrorism efforts or the international community’s short attention span than in detailing the complex fault lines that perpetuate Boko Haram’s brutal insurgency. After at least two centuries of ethnic and religious conflict, Habila writes that most Nigerians—especially in the north—are “always Muslim or Christian first, ethnic affiliation second, and Nigerian third.” The author briefly traces the history of these conflicts but leaves a more thorough accounting in the hands of historians. While Habila’s purpose is essentially journalistic, he does not shy away from heartbreaking literary asides. He writes of visiting Chibok years after the girls were taken: “it was like going to Hamelin and feeling the weight of the absent boys taken by the Pied Piper.” Habila also identifies long-running themes, tying Boko Haram’s kidnappings back to the Sokoto Caliphate, a 19th-century political entity established through jihad and economically sustained by enslaved Christians from Nigeria’s “Middle Belt.” According to the author, when Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, announced in a propaganda video, “I took your girls. I will turn your girls into slaves,” their parents, “descendants of the Middle Belt ‘pagans,’ understood exactly what he was saying.” Both an informative primer on Nigeria’s history of Islamist conflict and a passionate testimonial on behalf of the 218 Chibok girls still missing.

Kirkus Reviews