THE FAMOUS CHIBOK

Welcome to world famous Chibok, home of over
250 abducted schoolgirls
Chibok has no access road, and residents had
long feared militant may attack cars slowed by
the dilapidated road
Before the heinous attack of Monday the April 14,
in which over 250 secondary schools girls were
taken captives by Boko Haram militants, only a
handful of Nigerians outside of Borno State knew
or ever heard of Chibok, a small town in the
northeast state.
But three weeks after the raid that shocked the
world, Chibok, a laidback town southeast of
Maiduguri, Borno State capital, has lost all of its
seeming solitude and now sits at the centre of a
growing global spotlight, catapulted there by an
atrocious crime the world has risen to condemn.
As attention focuses on the abducted girls, it has
also helped frame the narrative of a town and its
people so deprived and tucked far off, almost
from the Nigerian civilisation.
According to the 2006 population census, Chibok
Local Government Area has a population of
66,105 people spread across an area of about
1,350 km².
For a start, there is no road access to Chibok-
no single asphalted road in the entire local
council area. Traveling to Chibok is like groping
in the dark, drivers often say, as they and other
commuters often have to meander through
contoured earth-road that could best be
described as footpath or cattle route.
One government driver quite conversant with the
area said “It has always been like this since
1970’s when I started as a government driver;
each time we are told to get set for a trip to
Chibok, it was like being told to get set for a trip
to hell”.
A federal highway leading to the town has
remained unattended to for years. The
construction of the 20 kilometre Damboa-
Chibok-Mbala road was approved in September
2009, and was to cost N1.24 billion.
That decision came after previous governments
planned and failed to build the road. Ali Ndume,
a senator, who was then a House of Reps
member representing Gwoza, Damboa, Chibok
federal constituency, claimed the 2009 contract
was his achievement.
In 2013, the Borno state government included
Mbala-Chibok-Damboa road amongst the
2500km roads that will link 33 towns in the
state. The so-called government’s
“comprehensive master plan” for rural roads was
to gulp a total of N36 billion.
A few earthmoving equipment deployed to the
road, still lie in its dirt, but nothing more has
been done by the authorities.
A home to some of Borno State’s brightest and
most outstanding public servants- at state and
federal level- Chibok local government has
remained one of the most obscured in the
troubled northeast state.
But something is unique about Chibok. It is one
of the most homogenous communities in the
state where the people only share a single
language (Chibok). Also, the local government
has an exceptionally large Christian majority
population of nearly 90 percent, amongst the
highest in the Muslim-dominated state.
Government Secondary School, Chibok, where
more than 250 girls were abducted by the Boko
Haram militants is the only secondary school in
the entire local government – a situation not
uncommon in other parts of the state.
The school was first established in the
mid-1970s as Women Teachers College which
was to serve the people of Chibok, Damboa,
Askira, Uba, Ashigir, Azir and even Gwoza. The
locals of Chibok had to fight it out during that
period when an attempt was made by the then
government to move the school to Azir, a village
in present day Damboa local government area.
In 1988, following the relaxed education policy
on teachers colleges, the school was converted
to a Government Girls Secondary School. At that
time, some of the local government areas like
Askira-Uba, Damboa and Gwoza had similar
secondary institutions. So the new GGSS, Chibok
now served as catchment centre for students
from Chibok council area and those in Askira-
Uba and Damboa councils whose villages are
closer to Chibok town.
In 2011, due to the lack of any other secondary
school in the entire local government, which
often compelled parents to send their male
wards to distant schools, the state ministry of
education upgraded the school to a mixed
institution, where both boys and girls are allowed
to study together.
“The boys are on permanent day-students
arrangement, while the girls still maintain their
boarding school culture; only those that are from
the Chibok town are at the liberty of choosing to
come from their homes,” said a teacher who
asked not to be named.
The school’s relatively high population is explained
by its being used by the entire local government, the
staff said.“It is not usually common to have more
than 100 or 200 students sitting for exams in a
single school in other parts of the state; but here we
have about 530 students that sat in the last exams,
and more than 70 percent of them are girls”, the
teacher added.Though there are a handful of
Muslims in Chibok town, there is no record of a
religious conflict there. “It has always been a one-
big-family affair for us; because we are all related,” a
resident said.Unlike most of the tribes in southern
Borno which are purely non-Kanuri speaking- except
those in Damboa whose language has a mixed grill
of Kanuri and Marghi language-, the people of
Chibok share a chieftaincy tradition that is purely
like those of the Kanuri. In fact, Chibok, unlike other
emirates and chiefdoms of Southern Borno, is still
under neo-colonial control of Borno Emirate. Its
District and Village heads answer the title “Mai”,
while the princes there are called “Maina”, just like
the Kanuri Royal Households of Borno, Dikwa and
Bama do.Despite the proximity of the local
government area to the dreaded Sambisa forest,
where Boko Haram is believed to have its main
operational base, attacks never occurred in Chibok
until April 14.“We have hosted people from Damboa
and Izge who had to run here to take refuge after
Boko Haram attacked their villages; we have not
recorded any incident until the recent attack on our
town and the Secondary school; it was indeed a
shocking experience to us because we never
expected it,” a resident, who identified himself as
Amos, said.Still, with the relative peace,
apprehension about the likelihood of a future attack
was rife in the community, and that fear was with the
dilapidated road leading into Chibok.Locals had
worried that with the abysmal nature of the road-
which ensures cars do not go beyond about 20km
per hour- the thick forest by the sides of the road
could serve as a hideout for insurgents who could
easily spring on slow-moving vehicles.The attack of
Monday, April 14, 2014, barely took that form,
according to the various accounts that have
emerged. But somehow, it was the manifestation of
what the community had long dreaded