ON February 19, 2018, at 5.30pm, 110 schoolgirls aged between 11 and 19, were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Dapchi in north-east Nigeria.

A month later, on March 21, 104 of the abducted girls were released. Their kidnappers advised the girls’ parents not to send them to school again and that “boko” (education) was “haram” (forbidden) for girls. The advice would be backed up with violence.

Of the six girls who were not released it later transpired that five had died during their ordeal.

Just one of the Dapichi schoolgirls, Leah Sharibu, remained hostage. Her friends reported that she was a Christian, aged 14 at the time of her capture and that she was not released with the other children because she refused to convert to Islam – or to be more precise, the unorthodox and mangled version of the Islamic faith practised by her kidnappers.

Over the past four years, Leah’s plight has become a symbol of the plight of thousands of young girls in Nigeria. The Nigerian Guardian newspaper named her as their person of the year in 2018 and it said: ‘‘She has since become the symbol of Nigeria’s refusal to give in to agents of darkness, hell-bent on dividing the country and appropriating a section of the nation’s territory unto themselves. She turned down personal liberty and chose to put her life on the line so that the whole of Nigeria may fulfil the promise of freedom and prosperity. She is a true heroine.’’

In October 2018, the country’s president Muhammadu Buhari assured Leah’s parents, Rebecca and Nathan, that the federal government would do its utmost for the safety and security of their daughter.

The abject failure of government action in the eight months prior to that promise has been followed by 40 months of despair and longing for the Sharibu family. Her captors have declared her a “slave for life”.

In January 2020, news outlets reported that Leah had given birth to a baby boy after been forcibly married off to a Boko Haram commander. The news of a second child being born was reported at the end of 2020.

It is tempting in such situations to think nothing can be done by anyone living in the north of England that would have an impact on the government of Nigeria, never mind upon Leah’s captors.

But the example of Peter Benenson, the Christian lawyer who founded Amnesty International in 1961 after reading about the harsh treatment and imprisonment of two Portugese students in Columbia, suggests otherwise.

The two students were freed as a result of a letter writing campaign and more than 50 years on, some 7m people have joined in letter writing or email campaigns leading to the freedom of thousands of individuals around the world, shaming governments to act.

In Durham we have been praying for Leah’s release regularly over the past four years. This week on this fourth anniversary we will faithfully continue in our prayers. We will also be urging people to write again to Nigerian embassies, Members of Parliament, the Foreign Secretary and the United Nations in order to Free Leah and for the triumph of hope.

The Reverend Arun Arora is the vicar of St Nicholas’ Church in Durham Market Place