Fifteen Years of Waiting: Nigeria’s Families Still Search for Loved Ones Who Vanished in the Violence

For more than 15 years, Nigeria’s 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 Borno State, to Port Harcourt in the south. According to Kashim, the two women were abducted by unidentified gunmen. The family’s wait has never ended since.

Years later, a man approached Kashim at Baga Road Market in Maiduguri with news that briefly revived the family’s hopes. He claimed Falmata had been found in Benin and was searching for her relatives. But the man disappeared without leaving any contact details, and Kashim 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, in Maiduguri’s Ngarnam ward. He said years of violence have torn his family apart: “As a result of the violence, I lost my sister from the same father.”

Their father, Mohammed Kolo, worked at Maiduguri’s State Specialist Hospital. Kashim said his father died at 60, from an illness the family attributed to high blood pressure, without ever learning what had happened to his daughter. He had refused to abandon hope that she would return. “Our father always said, ‘Wherever she is, I believe my daughter is alive,’” Kashim recalled.

Muhammad Alhaji Bashir lives with a similar void. His elder brother, Adam Muhammad Bashir, known as Bakura, went missing around 2012 or 2013, when Muhammad was about 14. Bakura, then believed to be in his early twenties, sold cosmetics in a Maiduguri market and was studying civil engineering at Ramat Polytechnic. Muhammad, now 29, said, “I sincerely lost my brother as a result of the Boko Haram crisis.”

Boko Haram’s armed rebellion began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009. Through attacks, abductions and displacement, the conflict has devastated communities, leaving countless families searching for relatives whose fates remain unknown.

Muhammad said Bakura’s family searched across Maiduguri, and a rehabilitation centre offered them some hope. “Whenever we heard that rescued people had been brought to the rehabilitation centre in Bulumkutu, we went there with Bakura’s pictures, but unfortunately, nobody recognised him,” he said. Muhammad said his father and stepmother, Bakura’s mother, later died from illnesses the family attributed to hypertension. He and other relatives continue to search, with no confirmation of whether Bakura is alive or dead.

The two families’ experiences reflect the uncertainty facing relatives of people who have disappeared during more than a decade of conflict in northeastern Nigeria. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), working with the Nigerian Red Cross Society, has supported efforts to trace missing people and reconnect separated families.

Local advocates for missing people cite an estimate of some 17,000 people missing across northern Nigeria, many of them linked to the conflict involving Boko Haram and its aftermath. Kashim said his association’s records indicate about 10,000 people are missing in Borno State alone. He added that many families have yet to register their missing relatives — meaning the true figure could be higher still.

Behind the estimates are families who have spent years searching: parents who died without learning what happened to their children, and children growing up without a parent. Some people disappeared during attacks on their communities; others became separated while fleeing violence or travelling between towns. Families search hospitals, displacement camps and centres receiving people rescued from conflict areas, often following leads that prove impossible to verify.

Kashim said his search for Falmata helped motivate him and other affected families to establish their association in 2023; the organisation obtained registration with Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission in 2025. Members meet monthly to share information and discuss their circumstances. According to Kashim, some families have lost eight or nine relatives. “In our community of Bolori II, we have many families who lost their relatives as a result of years of violence that ravaged northeastern Nigeria,” he said.

The association also supports children affected by the disappearances. Kashim said it is assisting about 600 orphaned children from affected families; some attend school, while others have dropped out because their relatives cannot afford their education or other basic needs. “We are now suffering because of the harsh living conditions,” he said, adding that the ICRC had distributed relief items to some families. When a missing person is a parent or breadwinner, relatives must cope with lost income while providing food, shelter and schooling — so the association’s work has expanded beyond tracing to helping families manage the hardships the disappearances leave behind.

The search became harder for some families after devastating floods struck parts of Maiduguri in 2024. Kashim said floodwaters submerged parts of Ngarnam and destroyed photographs families had kept to help identify missing relatives. Photographs can be vital in identifying people who have been rescued, displaced or found in unfamiliar communities; without them, relatives must rely on names, physical descriptions and memories.

For Kashim, finding Falmata would resolve a question that has haunted his family since 2011. His father died believing she might still return, and the family has never established whether the report of her discovery in Benin was true. Muhammad’s search for Bakura likewise continues without the parents who once helped him look for his brother.

Both families are appealing to anyone who may hold information about their missing relatives. For them, an answer would mean more than ending a search: it would establish what happened to someone whose absence has shaped their lives for years. Kashim’s message to his sister remains a plea for a reunion his family has awaited for years: “Falmata Mohammed, if you are alive anywhere in this world, we are the family of late Mohammed Kolo in Bolori II, Ngarnam. We are waiting for you.”