Boko Haram's Silent Wounds: Northeast Families Still Searching

Photo: Al Jazeera English

The Wait That Never Ends

Somewhere in Maiduguri, a woman named Hauwa Umar still sets an extra plate at dinner every night. Her son, Musa, was 19 years old when he disappeared from their village in Borno State in 2015. Nine years later, she doesn't know if he was abducted by Boko Haram, killed in crossfire, or somehow — somehow — still alive somewhere. "I cannot bury someone I have not seen," she told a community outreach worker. "My heart cannot rest."

This is the story that nobody in Abuja wants to tell you. While government officials hold press conferences about military victories and territorial gains against insurgents, thousands of Nigerian families in the Northeast are living in a different reality entirely — one where the violence may have quieted down but the pain is still very much on fire.

The Numbers That Should Shock Every Nigerian

Let's talk figures for a moment. The Boko Haram insurgency, which began properly devastating the Northeast around 2009-2011, has displaced over 2 million people across Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states. Human rights organisations estimate that tens of thousands of civilians went missing during the peak years of the crisis — and a staggering number of those cases remain unresolved till today.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has repeatedly flagged that Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of missing persons cases connected to armed conflict on the entire African continent. Yet, Nigeria does not have a dedicated missing persons commission, no centralised database for conflict-related disappearances, and no formal government programme to help families trace loved ones. Chai! How does that make sense?

Real Families, Real Pain

In Yola, Adamawa State, Ibrahim Adamu has been searching for his three brothers since 2014 when their village was raided. He has walked into military offices, knocked on government doors, and filed reports that seemed to disappear into the same void his brothers did. "They tell me to come back, come back, come back," he said. "Ten years of coming back and nobody has showed me anything."

Then there is Fatima, a widow in Konduga Local Government Area of Borno, whose husband and teenage daughter were separated from her during a 2016 displacement. She eventually made it to a camp in Maiduguri. They did not. She has since registered with three different humanitarian organisations, hoping one database might match with another. So far, nothing.

These are not isolated cases, my people. These are representative of a systematic failure — a failure of record-keeping, a failure of coordination, and honestly, a failure of political will to treat the Northeast's suffering as a priority even years after the worst of the violence.

Where Is the Government in All of This?

The Nigerian government's response to missing persons from the insurgency has been — and there is no polite way to say this — deeply inadequate. Here are the accountability gaps that should make every Nigerian ask serious questions:

• No centralised database: There is no single government-run registry where families can report missing persons from the conflict. Families are scattered across different agencies, NGO lists, and UNHCR registrations that don't talk to each other.
• Military opacity: Families of people who may have been caught in military operations — whether as casualties or detainees — often cannot get clear information from military authorities. The Nigerian Army does not have a transparent process for notifying next-of-kin in many cases.
• The Chibok girls precedent: Remember how the world rallied for the Chibok girls in 2014? That international pressure brought results — partial results, but results. The majority of missing persons in the Northeast never had hashtags. They never had foreign governments making calls. And so they remain forgotten.
• Rehabilitation without resolution: The government's Deradicalisation Programme (Operation Safe Corridor) focuses on rehabilitating repentant insurgents — which is fair. But there is no complementary programme that uses these individuals to help identify or locate missing civilians. That information is sitting there, and nobody is mining it properly.
• Underfunded state mechanisms: Borno and Yobe state governments have their own limitations in terms of budget and capacity. Without serious federal backing, tracing programmes cannot function at the scale required.

The Children Who Grew Up Not Knowing

Perhaps the most heartbreaking dimension of this crisis is the children. Some were separated from parents and ended up in IDP camps under different names, registered by humanitarian workers who had no way to verify identities. Some are now teenagers or young adults who genuinely do not know their full family histories. Some parents are looking for children who may be looking for them — and without a functioning system, they may never find each other.

A 2023 report by UNICEF estimated that thousands of children affected by the Northeast insurgency remain unaccounted for in formal systems. Some may have been absorbed into communities across Nigeria or neighbouring countries. The trail, already cold, grows colder every year.

What Needs to Happen — And Fast

This is not a situation where Nigerians should just fold their hands and say "na God go do am." There are concrete things that can be done:

First, the federal government needs to establish a National Missing Persons Commission — one with legal backing, proper funding, and the mandate to cover conflict-related disappearances specifically. Second, the Nigerian military should create a transparent, accessible process for families seeking information about civilian deaths or detentions connected to counter-insurgency operations. Third, civil society organisations working in the Northeast need better coordination frameworks so that their databases — which collectively hold enormous amounts of family tracing data — can actually be cross-referenced effectively.

And finally — finally — we need Nigerian media and public discourse to keep pressure on this issue. The Northeast cannot be treated as yesterday's problem when thousands of families are still living it today.

They Deserve More Than Silence

Hauwa still sets that plate. Ibrahim still walks into offices. Fatima still checks lists. These are human beings who deserve answers — not tomorrow, not in the next administration, now.

The insurgency may be winding down militarily, but its human cost is still being paid by ordinary Nigerians in the Northeast, every single day. Until Nigeria builds the systems and demonstrates the political commitment to find its missing, we cannot honestly say the crisis is over. We have just learned to look away.

And that, my fellow Nigerians, is something none of us should be comfortable with.