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. 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.
Their father, Mohammed Kolo, worked at Maiduguri’s State Specialist Hospital. Kashim said his father died at 60 from an illness he attributed to high blood pressure without learning what had happened to his daughter. Kolo had refused to abandon hope that she would return.
For Muhammad Alhaji Bashir, the disappearance of his elder brother, Adam Muhammad Bashir, known as Bakura, has left a similar void. Muhammad, 29, said Bakura went missing around 2012 or 2013 when Muhammad was about 14. His brother, then believed to be in his early 20s, sold cosmetics in a Maiduguri market and was studying civil engineering at Ramat Polytechnic, according to Muhammad.
Boko Haram’s armed rebellion began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009. The conflict has devastated communities through attacks, abductions and displacement, leaving families searching for relatives whose fates remain unknown. Muhammad said Bakura’s family searched across Maiduguri.
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