Reporting the Nigerian school kidnappings

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than 300 children were kidnapped from a school in the Western Nigerian village of Papiri in November, but in the aftermath, accounts of the kidnappings were confused and misleading. BBC Africa's Madina Maishanu was part of a team of journalists who faced huge risk to visit the site of the kidnappings and hear the testimonies of parents.

In October this year, a young Chechen woman living in Armenia, Aishat Baimuradova, was killed. She'd previously escaped a repressive life in Chechnya but is now believed to be the first Chechen woman in exile to be killed outside of Russia. BBC Russian's Zlata Onufrieva and Olga Prosvirova set out what is known about Aishat's life and death, and consider the implications of her killing for Chechen women living in exile.

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from The Fifth Floor, the show at the heart of global storytelling, with BBC journalists from all around the world.

Presented by Faranak Amidi.

Produced by Laura Thomas, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean.

(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:06.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:13.8	You're listening The Fifth Floor.
0:18.1	The Fifth Floor, you know you're listening.
0:20.0	The Fifth Floor, Farnak, Amid Isobat. The fifth floor is You're listening. This is the fifth floor
0:23.2	Farnak Amidi, Sobath.
0:26.7	This is the fifth floor
0:28.5	at the heart of global storytelling
0:31.2	with BBC journalists from all around the world.
0:35.0	I'm your host, Faranak Amidi.
0:44.4	A team of BBC journalists were the first to reach the remote location
0:47.1	of a school kidnapping back in November
0:49.2	in the village of Papiri, Western Nigeria.
0:52.9	More than 300 children were taken from a state boarding school
0:56.3	by armed groups. Nigeria has been experiencing a kidnapping crisis for over a decade, including
1:03.4	the infamous kidnapping of 276 girls from a boarding school in Chibok, Eastern Nigeria in 2014, by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
1:14.6	And a spate of abductions last month has underlined the persistence of the issue.
1:20.4	One of the journalists from that team is online with me right now, Medina Meishanu, senior
1:25.5	journalist from BBC Africa.
1:27.7	So, Madina, I know you are on a deployment and in a car talking to us, but just tell us,
1:33.0	why was it important for you to be on the location in the village of Papilla after the kidnapping
1:38.6	happened?
	...

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