Chibok Schoolgirls

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the missing Chibok schoolgirls in Nigeria.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Earlier this year the Select Committee on International Development, which I chair, visited Nigeria as part of an inquiry into the work of the British Government, including both the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office, in that country. As part of our visit, in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, we joined the regular vigil conducted by campaigners seeking to highlight the plight of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

As Committee members—I am glad to see so many of them here, as well as other Members from all parts of the House—we made a pledge that we would not forget about the girls or those campaigning to highlight their plight. We have taken opportunities since our visit to raise that with Ministers in both DFID and the Foreign Office. I am delighted—I give my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for this—that we have this opportunity to address this important issue once again.

Let me start by setting out some of the background. As colleagues may know, Boko Haram is roughly translated as “western education is forbidden” or “western education is a sin.” Among other things, we can take western education to mean girls getting an education. On 14 April 2014, Boko Haram militants attacked a government school in Chibok in the early hours and kidnapped 276 girls. At the time, other schools in that part of Nigeria were closed precisely because of the difficult security situation. The reason that the Chibok government school was open and the girls were there was to enable them to take their examinations, and that village was assumed to be a place of safety and security.

Some of the girls managed to escape during the night, but the total number of kidnapped girls was still 219. It is thought that they were taken to the Sambisa forest in the north-east of Nigeria. The forest has been considered by Boko Haram to be a safe haven: it is difficult for the Nigerian military to monitor the whole of this vast area of land. We understand that non-Muslim students who had been kidnapped were forced to convert to Islam and that many of the girls were married off—effectively enslaved to Boko Haram fighters.

It was not until 2 May that year that Boko Haram officially accepted responsibility for the kidnappings. Its former leader made its argument that the girls should not have been in school; they should instead have been married. Later that month, on 26 May, Nigerian forces claimed that they had located the girls but that a rescue operation was impossible due to the risk of collateral damage.

There was then a long period in which very little happened. Very little news came through from Boko Haram, the Nigerian Government or indeed other sources. Then in May this year—more than two years after the kidnapping—one of the girls was found in the Sambisa forest. Amina Ali Nkeki, aged 19, was found with a baby and a suspected Boko Haram fighter who claimed to be her husband. In August, Boko Haram released a video that appeared to show about 50 of the Chibok girls, and a masked fighter said that many had been killed in air strikes and many others had been married off.

The kidnapping of the girls sparked a global campaign: Bring Back Our Girls. I am wearing the badge that I was given when we were in Abuja earlier this year. There was a big social media campaign with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls on Twitter. The campaign was started by a lawyer in Abuja but it quickly trended on Twitter and became prominent. The official movement was started by Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former Federal Minister of Education in Nigeria and president of the African division of the World Bank. She said:

“The way our Government handled the Chibok girls’ case goes beyond an election matter.”

This was in the run-up to elections in Nigeria. She continued:

“This is not a one-time issue we discuss over elections. We need to have a deeper conversation about what kind of a nation we want to be.”

This was early on, following the kidnapping. She went on:

“Today is day 241 and the girls are still not back. If some people want to move on, it’s their right…But they should remember we moved on when 69 secondary schoolboys were killed, and nothing changed. Do our children now have to choose between getting an education and dying? Some of us cannot move on and accept that kind of society.”

The hashtag was promoted and propagated by celebrities, politicians and others across the world, including our former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), the Pope and the actress Julia Roberts. Perhaps most prominent was the First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama, who said in 2014:

“This unconscionable act was committed by a terrorist group determined to keep these girls from getting an education—grown men attempting to snuff out the aspirations of young girls.”

She went on to say:

“Why, two years ago, would terrorists be so threatened by the prospect of girls going to school that they would break into a dormitory in the middle of the night?”

She also said:

“What happened in Nigeria was not an isolated incident. It’s a story we see every day as girls around the world risk their lives to pursue their ambitions.”

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

The Chair of the Select Committee is making a powerful speech. I well recall being at that meeting in Abuja with the supporters of the girls, who are dedicated and tireless campaigners. It was deeply moving. He mentioned that this has happened to countless children across the world and that these girls are still missing. Does he agree that it is very concerning that the Department for International Development does not focus more closely on human trafficking, particularly given that we hear reports of girls being trafficked, perhaps for prostitution or servitude, into this country from Nigeria, the very country about which he is speaking?

[Stephen Twigg]

I am grateful to my friend, the hon. Lady, who is an assiduous and hard-working member of our Select Committee. I pay tribute to her for her consistency in raising these issues in the Committee and the House and with the wider public. I absolutely agree with her. We have seen a greater focus by Her Majesty’s Government on issues around human trafficking, but it is vital that all the different Departments join up their efforts to maximise the impact of that commitment.

The organisation that has been campaigning has aimed to raise awareness of the plight of the girls and to encourage the Nigerian Government to do all within their power to bring the girls back. The United Kingdom Government, along with other Governments including the United States, France, China and Israel, have all contributed significant military and economic resources to the region to support the attempt to find and rescue the girls. A regional taskforce was launched with Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, amassing almost 9,000 regional troops to force Boko Haram out of the Chad Basin National Park. There has been concern among parliamentarians globally. For example, the European Parliament passed a resolution two years ago calling for the

“immediate and unconditional release of the abducted schoolgirls”.

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the UK Government’s role in seeking to find the girls. Last year, the UK sent around 130 military personnel to Nigeria to assist in training the Nigerian military. The UK and the US have provided counter-terrorism support and advice and, importantly, support and advice on hostage negotiation and victim support capabilities for Nigeria. Additionally, the UK has invested around £5 million in supporting the multinational joint taskforce set up by Nigeria and its neighbours to combat Boko Haram. From our point of view on the International Development Committee, we welcome the UK’s role in humanitarian relief for those most affected by the insurgency, which we set out in a report published earlier in the summer. That money is being used to provide food, water, sanitation and emergency healthcare for up to 7 million people across Nigeria.

I will also mention, in particular, the safe schools initiative in Nigeria, which has helped more than 90,000 displaced children return to school and provided them with the learning materials and teachers needed, including those giving psychosocial support. DFID has played a role in supporting that project as well, and we welcome the support that DFID and other parts of the UK Government have given.

The United Nations appeal for Nigeria is not fully funded and we urge the Government to do all they can to ensure that it is, including by other countries. At the world humanitarian summit in Turkey in May, commitments were made to address education in emergencies. We think it is crucial for the UK Government, and for DFID in particular, to use their resources and influence on other donors to ensure that the “Education Cannot Wait” fund is properly supported and quickly operationalised so that interruptions to education caused by conflict are minimised to no more than 30 days.

We know that in Nigeria, in that region and in other parts of Africa and the middle east, increasing numbers of children are spending a large part of their childhood, or their entire childhood, as refugees or internally displaced people. It is vital they get that access to education as they grow up, and we therefore recommend that DFID scale up its support for the safe schools initiative, as well as engaging with and supporting the special investigative committee appointed by President Buhari of Nigeria to assess the safety of schools in that country. Our recent report also recommended that DFID continue its support for work to address the drivers of conflict through the Nigerian stability and reconciliation programme.

Since the kidnapping, the Nigerian Government have pursued a military campaign against Boko Haram. They have been able to free other women and girls who have been held by Boko Haram, but none were the Chibok girls. We know that Boko Haram has continued to kidnap women and girls in the north-east of Nigeria. We also know that it has been affected by internal strife and a leadership struggle following its pledge of allegiance to Daesh last year, which resulted in an internal division in the movement. It remains the case that only one girl has escaped from the original 219. There have been sightings of the girls, including by a former clergyman, Stephen Davis, as well as by citizens in Cameroon and Chad.

During his inaugural speech, President Buhari committed to redoubling the Nigerian Government’s efforts to find the girls, saying Nigeria will not have

“defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls”.

We know that, because of the conflict in Nigeria, nearly 1 million school-aged children have been forced to flee their homes. According to the Human Rights Watch report, “‘They Set the Classrooms on Fire’: Attacks on Education in Northeast Nigeria”, 600,000 children have lost access to learning altogether. We know that teachers have been killed and have had to flee, and that attacks in the north-east of Nigeria have destroyed more than 900 schools and forced a further 1,500 to close.

Today’s debate is an opportunity for us to demonstrate the strength of cross-party commitment in the House to this important movement and campaign. Last year at the United Nations, the countries of the world came together and adopted the sustainable development goals—the “global goals”, as they have become known. Among those goals are commitments to global education, gender equality and, in goal 16, to

“Peace, justice and strong institutions”.

There can be no better way of demonstrating our commitment to those goals than maintaining the campaign to ensure that we “bring back our girls”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

May I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Brady? We have had an excellent debate, with powerful, well informed and sometimes, understandably, emotional contributions from across the House. I thank everyone for their participation, but particularly members, or those who have recently been members, of the International Development Committee, including those who are here in another capacity and therefore cannot take part in the debate.

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment as Africa Minister. One of the themes of the debate is that it is important that we work together cross-departmentally. An increasing proportion of overseas development assistance will now be delivered through other Departments as well as DFID. The Select Committee wants to make sure that we work together to scrutinise the other Departments’ expenditure, which obviously includes the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

I echo strongly what my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), a fellow Committee member, said in tribute to the Foreign Office and DFID staff on the ground in Nigeria. We had fantastic support from them for our visit earlier this year, and they are a fine example of how the two Departments can work together on the ground in an integrated way on behalf of the British Government.

Many broader issues were raised by several Members, and in particular by the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). I hope that we shall have an early opportunity to consider some of the broader challenges that Nigeria and west Africa face, such as economic challenges, the trade issues that he is working on, broader issues of education and women and girls, health challenges, and the challenge of supporting the Nigerian Parliament and further strengthening democracy in the country. I should welcome the chance to address in the House many of the issues dealt with in the Committee’s report published earlier in the summer.

I want to finish with two points. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) spoke about the diaspora voice, and it is important that it should be heard on such questions. My friend, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), is one of a number of Members who have Nigerian family connections, which added extra power to her brilliant speech. Just before the debate I was talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who also has connections in Nigeria, as does the new shadow Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor). Hearing those voices in the House is important, but so is hearing them in the wider community.

The debate has demonstrated the strength of commitment and feeling across the House. We need to get back to the focus of the Bring Back Our Girls message. I welcome what the Minister said in response to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn—that he will find a suitable opportunity to set out on behalf of the Government their continued commitment on the issue. I hope that we have demonstrated today that Parliament shares that commitment. We send out from Westminster Hall this afternoon this message—that we want, as our badges say, to bring back our girls now. I look forward to a future debate in this Chamber or the House, where we can celebrate the return, and the reuniting with their families, of those girls who are still alive; I look forward to making that stride towards gender equality, and towards education for all children, but particularly for girls, in Nigeria.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the missing Chibok schoolgirls in Nigeria.