Sunday’s video showed a group of about 40 girls in Islamic dress sitting or standing around a masked man armed with an assault rifle. “Some of them have died as a result of bombing by the infidels”, he said.
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The mass kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April 2014 provoked global outrage and brought unprecedented attention to Boko Haram and its bloody quest to create a fundamentalist state in northeastern Nigeria.
Nigeria’s military is continuing with operations against Boko Haram, despite the militants offering to return the kidnapped Chibok girls in a prisoner swap, the country’s chief of defense staff has said.
Relatives of the missing Chibok girls are expressing their anger and anguish at the Nigerian government over the continued detention of their girls.
But her mother, Esther Yakubu, reacted angrily at the inability of the Nigerian government to get the girls back. President Buhari should see the exchange as an avenue to dust the shame othet than allow the girls to languish in captivity for over two years.
In the video, one veiled girl could be seen holding a baby, while unidentified bodies could be seen on the ground. He also said they know where the Chibok girls are being kept. This is likely to avoid a repeat of an embarrassing hoax a few months after the girls were kidnapped which saw the government negotiate with the wrong people.
Again, in a video recently released by the insurgents, they said unless the government releases their members who were being detained in Abuja, Lagos and Maiduguri prisons, they won’t release the girls.
According to a translation by The Guardian, she says, “To our parents-please be patient.There is no kind of suffering we haven’t seen”. Dozens of girls managed to escape in the hours after the ambush, but the fate of the missing 218 girls remains unknown.
“We recognize up to 10 from the video”, Abdullahi said, adding that he is waiting for confirmation from the Nigerian government and parents of the girls before releasing any more names. Loosely translated, Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden”, and schools are a favorite target.
Throughout past year the military announced the rescue of hundreds of people, majority women and children, who have been kidnapped by the Islamists.
CNN interviewed her father, Yakubu Kabu, who was ecstatic to learn his daughter is still alive.
“Mr. Buhari can absolutely afford to exchange the lives of schoolgirls terrorists, “said the lawyer Emmanuele Ogebe, which launched a campaign to educate girls Chibok the United States”.
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It is understood the girls featured in the video are with a breakaway faction led by group leader Abubakar Shekau.
