Isha Isatu Sesay is a British journalist of Sierra Leonean descent. From 2005 to 2018, she worked as an anchor and correspondent for CNN International. Originally based at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. and now based in Los Angeles, California, where she hosted the news programs CNN Newsroom Live from Los Angeles. In addition, she was the presenter of the 360 Bulletin on Anderson Cooper 360°. In 2012, Sesay also joined HLN as a co-anchor for Evening Express. She left CNN in 2018 to support a girl's education project called W.E. Can Lead for African girls, write a book and follow various other personal projects.
Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili is an economic policy expert, an advocate for transparency, accountability, good governance and human capital development, a humanitarian and an activist. She is a former vice president for the World Bank's Africa region, co-founder and founding director of Transparency International, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement and has served twice as Federal Minister in Nigeria. She is also the founder of #FixPolitics Initiative, a research-based citizen-led initiative, the School of Politics Policy and Governance (SPPG), and Human Capital Africa.
Dame Patience Faka Jonathan (born 25 October 1957) is a Nigerian civil servant who served as the First Lady of Nigeria from 2010 to 2015 and second lady of Nigeria from 2007 to 2010. She is the wife of former president and Vice president of Nigeria Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. She served as a Permanent Secretary in Bayelsa State.
Yvonne Ndege is an international journalist, and media and communications professional. She started her career at the British Broadcasting Corporation, as a graduate trainee in London, United Kingdom.
Zain Ejiofor Asher is a British Nigerian news anchor at CNN International, based in New York City. She currently anchors the network's primetime, global news show One World with Zain Asher airing weekdays at 12pm ET. Her memoir Where The Children Take Us was published by HarperCollins in April 2022.
Ramaa Devi Mosley is an American filmmaker, director, and writer based in Los Angeles. She began directing commercials, music videos, and documentaries at 16-years-old. She is also an activist, known for raising national and international awareness about the importance of education of girls globally and supporting the victims of the Chibok schoolgirl kidnapping in Nigeria by using social media to raise global awareness.
On the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Prior to the raid, the school had been closed for four weeks due to deteriorating security conditions, but the girls were in attendance in order to take final exams in physics.
Hadiza Bala Usman is a Nigerian politician who served as the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports from 2016 to 2021. She was previously the chief of staff to the Governor of Kaduna State from 2015 to 2016.
Chikaodinaka Sandra Oduah is a Nigerian-American journalist who has worked as a television news producer, correspondent, writer and photographer. She is currently a correspondent for VICE News. Known for her unique human-focused ethnographic reporting style with an anthropological approach, she was awarded a CNN Multichoice African Journalist Award in 2016. Upon the abduction of 276 schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, she was the first international journalist to visit and spend extensive time in the remote community of Chibok. Her thorough and exclusive coverage of the mass kidnapping won her the Trust Women "Journalist of The Year Award" from the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2014. Oduah's reporting explores culture, history, conflict, human rights, and development to capture the complexities, hopes and everyday realities of Africans and people of African descent.
Vladimir Duthiers is an American television journalist who has been a correspondent for CBS News since 2014 following five years at CNN. He was a member of the CNN team that won two Emmy Awards for its coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and he won a Peabody Award for his coverage from Nigeria of the kidnapping of the schoolgirls by Boko Haram.
Amina Ali Nkeki is a Nigerian former hostage of Boko Haram. She was one of 276 female students the group kidnapped from Chibok in 2014. After 57 of the girls escaped in the first few months, the remaining 219 were held for several years. Of this larger group, Ali was the first freed. She was found on 17 May 2016 by Civilian Joint Task Force along with a four-month-old child and an alleged Boko Haram member, Mohammed Hayatu, who described himself as her husband. All three were severely malnourished.
Laila St. Matthew-Daniel is an executive coach, leadership trainer, speaker, author, women's rights activist and writer. She is the founder and President of ACTS Generation GBV, a non-governmental organization which combats domestic violence and child abuse in Nigeria. She has organized various protests for the rights of women and the girl-child, some of which are the Buni Yadi Massacre of February 2014 and part of initiating group who organized first protest against the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping by the Boko Haram sect. She has organized various sensitization seminars and workshops to empower women on the issues of self mastery, self awareness, and self actualization.
Operation Turus is the code name of the British military operation to assist Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency. It was launched in April 2014 by Prime Minister David Cameron in response to the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.
On February 19, 2018, at 5:30 pm, 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years old were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group from the Government Girls' Science and Technical College (GGSTC). Dapchi is located in Bulabulin, Bursari Local Government area of Yobe State, in the northeast part of Nigeria. The federal government of Nigeria deployed the Nigerian Air Force and other security agencies to search for the missing schoolgirls and to hopefully enable their return. The governor of Yobe State, Ibrahim Gaidam, blamed Nigerian Army soldiers for having removed a military checkpoint from the town. Dapchi lies approximately 275 km northwest of Chibok, where over 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014.
Joel Kachi Benson is a Nigerian documentary filmmaker and virtual reality content creator. In 2019, he produced Daughters of Chibok, a virtual reality film on the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. He is the Creative Director of virtual reality film studios VR360 Stories in Lagos, Nigeria.
Daughters of Chibok is an 11-minute Nigerian short film. The virtual reality documentary tells the story of Yana Galang, whose daughter, Rifkatu, was among the 276 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014 from their school dormitory in Chibok, northeast Nigeria. The film was made to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.
Kidnapping is a major problem in Nigeria in the early 21st century. Kidnapping by bandits and insurgents is among the biggest organised or gang crime in Nigeria and is a national security challenge.
'Yemi Adamolekun is executive director of Enough is Enough. She campaigns for better governance in Nigeria and is also a senior associate in the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
During the evening of 11 December 2020, over 300 pupils were kidnapped from a boys' secondary boarding school on the outskirts of Kankara, Katsina State, northern Nigeria. A gang of gunmen on motorcycles attacked the Government Science Secondary School, where more than 800 pupils reside, for over an hour.
The Zamfara kidnapping was the abduction of 279 female students aged between 10 and 17 during a raid by armed bandits on 26 February 2021. The kidnapping occurred at the Government Girls Science Secondary School, a boarding school in Jangebe, in Zamfara State, Nigeria. All hostages were released by the bandits on 2 March 2021, though claims vary as to the negotiation methods used by the Nigerian government in order to facilitate their release.
