Boko Haram on Sunday released a new video purportedly showing some of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the militant group from the Nigerian town of Chibok more than two years ago. One girl escaped this year, saying she had been led to freedom by her Boko Haram “husband”.
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In the video, the fighter says the Nigerian government has repeatedly lied to its citizens with promises to quickly free those kidnapped from Chibok Government Girls School, who now are all over 18 years old. Hundreds of other girls and boys have also been kidnapped and murdered by the group.
“We are nevertheless studying the video clips to examine if the victims died from other causes rather (than) from the allegation of airstrike”, he said.
According to a Naij report, the video was shared with some of the girls’ parents, leaving them in a state of depression and pain.
A girl who gave her name as Maida Yakubu speaks in the Chibok dialect and chokes back tears as she describes an air strike by Nigerian armed forces. He portrays the government as the villain and says his group is keen on a prisoner swap – the girls for Boko Haram fighters being held in Nigerian jails. About 40 of the girls have been married off, the masked man said.
This development comes hours after Boko Haram released its latest video parading a cross section of the Chibok girls and making demands to their parents and the federal government on conditions to secure their release.
Dozens of the girls managed to flee to safety in the initial melee, but more than 200 are still missing.
The Nigerian government had declared its readiness to negotiate with the group but said it would not negotiate with a group that do not have any known representative.
The group split recently, after an Islamic State-run magazine named Abu Musab Barnawi as the new leader of Boko Haram, angering Shekau and his followers.
“Please go and beg the government of Nigeria to release the members of our abductors so that they too can free us to let us come home”.
While Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the group is “technically defeated” his government has struggled to find the girls, in a political embarrassment for the leadership highlighting Boko Haram’s continued presence in the region.
Boko Haram has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing more than 2.6 million people since it launched a brutal insurgency in Nigeria in 2009 that has since spread into several neighbouring countries.
Aid workers say there is a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in newly liberated but still risky areas where half a million people are starving and babies dying daily.
In the background, several girls look visibly distressed and dab their eyes. This becomes necessary as a result of their link with the last two videos released by Boko Haram Terrorists and other findings of our preliminary investigations.
“When I heard her voice, I realized she is my daughter”, Kanu Yakubu told reporters in Abuja.
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“We don’t want to do anything with these girls”.
