Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Boko Haram, officially known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād, is an Islamist jihadist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, which is also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon, and Mali. In 2016, the group split, resulting in the emergence of a hostile faction known as the Islamic State's West Africa Province.
Chibok is a Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria, located in the southern part of the state. It has its headquarters in the town of Chibok.
The Boko Haram insurgency began in July 2009, when the militant Islamist and jihadist rebel group Boko Haram started an armed rebellion against the government of Nigeria. The conflict is taking place within the context of long-standing issues of religious violence between Nigeria's Muslim and Christian communities, and the insurgents' ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in the region.
Timeline of the Boko Haram insurgency is the chronology of the Boko Haram insurgency, an ongoing armed conflict between Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram and the Nigerian government. Boko Haram have carried out many attacks against the military, police and civilians since 2009, mostly in Nigeria. The low-intensity conflict is centred on Borno State. It peaked in the mid-2010s, when Boko Haram extended their insurgency into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
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 called 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.
The Sambisa Forest is a forest in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. It is in the southwestern part of Chad Basin National Park, about 60 km southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. It has an area of 518 km2.
On the night of 5–6 May 2014, Boko Haram militants attacked the twin towns of Gamboru and Ngala in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. About 310 residents were killed in the 12-hour massacre, and the town was largely destroyed.
From 20 to 23 June 2014, a series of attacks occurred in Borno State, Nigeria. 91 women and children were kidnapped in the attacks and more than 70 people were killed.
The following lists events from 2014 in Nigeria.
Quasi-state-level jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have captured and enslaved women and children, often for sexual slavery. In 2014 in particular, both groups organised mass kidnappings of large numbers of girls and younger women.
The 2015 Chad suicide bombings were a suicide attack which occurred the afternoon of Saturday 10, October 2015 in the town of Baga Sola, Chad, a small fishing community on Lake Chad. The attack was allegedly perpetrated by the Nigeria-based Islamic extremist group Boko Haram and resulted in the deaths of around 36 individuals, and wounded upwards of 50 more. The attacks were reportedly carried out by two women, two children, and a man with the intended targets being a busy marketplace, and a nearby refugee camp hosting tens of thousands of Nigerians. It was the deadliest attack to take place in the Lake Chad region.
Chikaodinaka Sandra Oduah is a Nigerian-American journalist, poet and cultural entrepreneur who has worked as a television news producer, correspondent, writer and photographer. She is the founder of Zikora Media & Arts, which operates as a media production company and a cultural institution. Oduah was formerly 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.
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.
Oil on Water is a 2010 petrofiction novel by Nigerian author Helon Habila. The novel documents the experience of two journalists as they try to rescue a kidnapped European wife in the oil landscape of the Niger Delta. The novel explores themes of both the ecological and political consequences of oil conflict and petrodollars in the delta.
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.
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.
Girl is a 2019 novel by Irish author Edna O'Brien. The book's plot is inspired by the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in Nigeria, and is narrated by a fictional victim, Maryam.
Waiting for an Angel is a 2002 political novel written by Nigeria writer Helon Habila. It was first published by New York's publishing firm W. W. Norton & Company.
Travelers is a 2019 novel by Nigerian author Helon Habila. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company. The story revolves around the life of a Nigerian expatriate who travels around Europe to know more about African refugees.
