Nigerian families in northeast still searching for relatives missing since 2011

Families in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, continue to search for relatives who disappeared more than a decade ago during the region’s prolonged conflict.

Kashim Mohammed, 39, has not seen his younger sister, Falmata Mohammed, since 2011. She vanished while travelling with their mother from Maiduguri to Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria. Kashim says unidentified gunmen abducted the two women. Years later, a man at Baga Road Market told Kashim that Falmata had been found in Benin and was looking for her relatives. The man left no contact details and Kashim has never been able to confirm whether the report was true.

Their father, Mohammed Kolo, worked at Maiduguri’s State Specialist Hospital. He died at 60 from an illness linked to high blood pressure, still believing his daughter might return, according to Kashim.

Muhammad Alhaji Bashir, 29, is searching for his elder brother, Adam Muhammad Bashir, known as Bakura, who went missing around 2012 or 2013. Bakura, then in his early 20s, sold cosmetics in a Maiduguri market and studied civil engineering at Ramat Polytechnic. Muhammad attributes his brother’s disappearance to the Boko Haram crisis. The armed rebellion began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009 and has caused attacks, abductions and displacement.

The families’ searches have included visits to hospitals, displacement camps and the rehabilitation centre in Bulumkutu, where rescued people are sometimes taken. Muhammad said relatives took Bakura’s photographs there, but no one recognised him. His father and stepmother later died from illnesses the family attributed to hypertension.

Local advocates estimate that 17,000 people are missing across northern Nigeria, many connected to the Boko Haram conflict and its aftermath. Kashim’s association says its records show about 10,000 missing people in Borno State alone, though many families have not registered their missing relatives. The sources behind these estimates have not been independently established for this article.

Kashim chairs the Association for the Well-being of Displaced and Missing Persons’ Families, based in Bolori II, Ngarnam ward. The group formed in 2023 and registered with Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission in 2025. Members meet monthly to share information. Kashim said the association is helping about 600 orphaned children from affected families, though some have dropped out of school because relatives cannot afford fees or basic needs.

Floods in parts of Maiduguri in 2024 made searches harder. Water submerged areas of Ngarnam and destroyed photographs that families had kept to help identify missing relatives.

Both families are asking anyone with information to come forward. Kashim’s message to his sister remains a plea for reunion: if she is alive anywhere, the family of the late Mohammed Kolo in Bolori II is waiting.

Source: Al Jazeera.