For more than fifteen years, Kashim Mohammed has held onto the hope that his younger sister, Falmata Mohammed, might still be alive. According to Al Jazeera, 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, where reporting indicates they were abducted by unidentified gunmen.
Al Jazeera reported that years later, an unidentified man approached Kashim at the Baga Road Market in Maiduguri, claiming Falmata had been found in Benin and was searching for her relatives. However, the man vanished without leaving any contact details, leaving Kashim unable to verify whether the information was genuine, as noted by Al Jazeera.
Kashim, who is 39 years old and chairs the Association for the Well-being of Displaced and Missing Persons’ Families based in Bolori II, Ngarnam ward, Maiduguri, told Al Jazeera that the ongoing violence has profoundly fractured his family. According to Al Jazeera, his father, Mohammed Kolo—who worked at Maiduguri's State Specialist Hospital—passed away at age 60 from an illness attributed to high blood pressure, having never learned what happened to his daughter.
Similarly, Muhammad Alhaji Bashir shared his account with Al Jazeera, describing how his elder brother, Adam Muhammad Bashir, known as Bakura, went missing around 2012 or 2013. According to Muhammad, his brother was in his early twenties at the time, selling cosmetics in a Maiduguri market and studying civil engineering at Ramat Polytechnic. Muhammad, who was about 14 when his brother vanished, stated to Al Jazeera that he lost his brother as a result of the Boko Haram crisis, and explained that his family repeatedly searched rehabilitation centers with Bakura's pictures whenever rescued individuals were brought in.
Background
According to Al Jazeera, Boko Haram’s armed rebellion began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009. The ongoing conflict has severely devastated communities throughout the region through recurring attacks, abductions, and mass displacement, leaving countless families searching for relatives whose ultimate fates remain entirely unknown.
Why it matters
For readers across Pakistan and beyond, the anguish of families searching for missing loved ones highlights the deep, lasting human toll of protracted conflict and violence. The accounts from Maiduguri reflect a universal pain shared by communities dealing with displacement and the absence of closure when family members vanish during times of crisis.