LEAH, DID YOU KNOW?
(Original Music Video Dedicated to Leah Sharibu) (c) 2025 Save the Persecuted Christians
Credits: Dede Laugesen and Oleg Atbashian
Lyrics and chords can be found at our website here.
WASHINGTON, DC — This song is dedicated to #LeahSharibu, who at 14 on February 19, 2018, was abducted at a science and technology school for girls in the town of Dapchi, in Yobe State, Nigeria, with 109 other students, five of whom died on the way to the terrorist hideout.
Leah repeatedly stared down the terrorists and refused to renounce her Christian faith.
Friends, held in captivity with Leah, said that every time the terrorists with their guns demanded, “Who here is a Christian?” Leah’s arm would shoot up even as her peers tried to force it down.
A month later, all the living captives were released save Leah.
Leah was kept as “a slave for life” because of her Christian faith, while the other young captives were released due to government negotiations with ISWAP. The terrorists said, “Based on our doctrines, it is now lawful for us to do whatever we want to do with her.”
Leah, still held today is reportedly married off to an ISWAP commander and is being forced to bear him children. Accounts of her fearless faith have encouraged millions of Christians facing extreme persecution.
Save the Persecuted Christians, along with Hon. Frank R. Wolf and ICON, brought Leah’s mom, Rebecca, to Washington, DC, to plead for her rescue.
Many human rights advocates believe the Nigerian government knows where Leah is kept but has not moved to rescue her. Leah is one of thousands of Christian women and girls held hostage in camps, sold as slaves, or forcibly “married” to jihadists.
“The genocide of Christians in Nigeria has been a terrible cross to bear for the women and children. We must do all we can to bring them home,” said Dede Laugesen, president of Save the Persecuted Christians.
Please pray for her rescue as we seek to help her come home again!
Share this song to keep her story alive.
Gloria Puldu, President, The Leah Foundation
Save the Persecuted Christians has worked for years with Gloria Puldu, president of The Leah Foundation, to keep fresh the story of Leah Sharibu and all the women and girls of Nigeria who suffer at the hands of Islamists. We recently arranged for Ms. Puldu to appear on “The Faulkner Focus” with Harris Faulkner as part of our mission to educate Americans on the brutal realities of Christian persecution globally and to help its victims have a voice in the West.
STATISTICS ON NIGERIAN SCHOOL ABDUCTIONS
More than 2,000 Nigerian students have been kidnapped in mass school abductions by terrorists (primarily Boko Haram) or bandits since the 2014 Chibok incident, though exact figures vary due to inconsistent reporting and multiple incidents.
A 2023 Save the Children report documented 1,683 schoolchildren kidnapped since the Chibok abduction of 276 girls.
Major incidents since then include approximately 287 students in Kaduna (March 2024), 25 girls in Kebbi (November 2025, later released), and over 300 (303 students plus staff) from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger state (November 2025).
Adding these and smaller cases pushes the total above 2,000. Earlier 2025 reports citing 1,400–1,500 likely reflect pre-2024/2025 data.
Several hundred students remain in captivity overall, though most victims from bandit-led kidnappings are eventually released after ransoms (often paid privately despite bans).
From Chibok (2014): About 82 girls remain missing as of the latest Amnesty International update in 2024, with no reported changes in 2025.
From the November 2025 St. Mary’s abduction: Initially 315 taken (303 students, 12 staff); ~50 escaped soon after, and 100 were released by early December, leaving approximately 165 still held as of mid-December 2025.
Victims from most other incidents (e.g., Dapchi 2018, Kankara 2020, Kaduna 2024) have been released or rescued, with rare exceptions involving deaths or individuals retained (often for ideological reasons in Boko Haram cases).
These figures come from cross-referenced reports by UNICEF, Amnesty International, Save the Children, BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and others. School abductions have surged in northern Nigeria due to banditry for ransom and lingering jihadist activity, though many cases resolve through negotiations rather than rescues.
