Nigeria’s missing: Families in the northeast still wait for answers

Maiduguri, Nigeria – For more than 15 years, Kashim Mohammed has hoped that his younger sister, Falmata Mohammed, is still alive.Falmata disappeared in 2011 while travelling with her mother from Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, to Port Harcourt in the south. According to Kashim, the two women were abducted by unidentified gunmen.Years later, a man approached Kashim at Baga Road Market in Maiduguri with news that briefly revived the family’s hopes of finding the women. He claimed Falmata had been found in Benin and was searching for her relatives.But the man disappeared without leaving contact details. Kashim said he has never been able to establish whether the information was genuine.“From then until now, nobody knows anything about the man who brought the information,” he said.Kashim, 39, chairs the Association for the Well-being of Displaced and Missing Persons’ Families, a community organisation based in Bolori II, Ngarnam ward, Maiduguri. He said years of violence have torn his family apart.“As a result of the violence, I lost my sister from the same father,” he said.Their father, Mohammed Kolo, worked at Maiduguri’s State Specialist Hospital. Kashi...