Boko Haram and the Abduction of the Chibok Schoolgirls

     For our project, my group researched the kidnapping of 276 girls from a school in Nigeria.  The girls were kidnapped in 2014 by a militant Islamic organization by the name of Boko Haram, who have been responsable for a surge of fundamentalist violence in Nigeria.  We examined the colonial history of Nigeria that has led to the internal instability of the country, the history of Boko Haram, and the specific incident of abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in our first blog post.  The #BringBackOurGirls campaign brought attention to the issue, but the overall effectiveness of it has been called into question.  This is why in the second post we had planned to examine the media’s coverage of the issue, and the actions taken by domestic and international communities.  However, during our research the story broke that 21 of the Chibok girls had just been released from captivity.  This was an impressive update after a period of relatively little development on the issue.  For this reason, we decided to split the focus of the second post to include this as well.  In our third post we covered the difficulty girls who were released from Boko Haram faced with assimilating back into society.  A number of the girls have even become unwilling to leave their captors for fear of becoming a pariah in their communities.  Others are unwilling to leave because they have been married to Boko Haram soldiers.  Some of the girls have even adopted radical ideology of Boko Haram. These obstacles to reintegration have posed a substantial issue for the girls unfortunately must face in order to move forward and rebuild after this tragedy.

     To ease the individual work load, research was divided between members of the group based on particular subjects pertaining to each blog post.  For the initial blog post we decided that each of our group members would pick an area to research, take notes on, and cite sources for.  Then one of us write the post, and another one of us would post the finished product.  After deciding that this was an unfair distribution of work, we decided to have each person go a step further and write a paragraph on the subject we were researching.  All of our work was uploaded to a Google doc so that we could each have access to the material.  This lessened the work load for the person who wrote the final post.  Then we would all review the post before it was uploaded.  I believe that assigning particular tasks to specific individuals helped to maintain accountability and was very beneficial to our group cohesion.  We did have moments during our process when communication could have been better.  However I believe that we managed the project well and were able to overcome the obstacles we encountered along the way.

     Aside from being able to cover a topic of our own choice, this project was particularly beneficial because it gave us the opportunity to cover a news story as it progressed.  During the process of composing our second blog post, a massive development occurred when 21 of the schoolgirls were released from Boko Haram after negotiations between the Nigerian government and the extremist group.  We decided to switch the focus of our post half way through the research process.  We felt that if we did not cover this development, we would not be doing the story justice.  This was just an example of how quickly developments can come when researching a progressing story.  The project was also a lesson in group work and communication.  At times we struggled to maintain cohesion, but we managed to work through our issues and work together effectively.