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.
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NAN recalls that more than 200 students of Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno, North East Nigeria, were abducted in the early hours of April 14, 2014.
Minister of information, Lai Mohammed, has emphasised that the government is on top of the situation and efforts are being made to rescue the kidnapped girls.
“We are not going to let up until this government acts”, said Oby Ezekwesili.
The girl was identified as Maida Yakubu was seen in the video describing an air strike by the Nigerian armed forces.
The video, cited by the SITE Intelligence Group, was posted by Ahmad Salkida, a Nigerian journalist known to have good contacts in Boko Haram.
“I’m very, very happy I saw my daughter on the video and I’m very happy she’s alive”, Yakubu Kabu told CNN.
The government of Nigeria is allegedly in talks with the group regarding their demands, Al Jazeera reports.
She says that seeing her daughter only confirmed what she had believed all along; that her daughter has been hale and alive.
In his reaction on Monday, Mr. Salkida said the Army was declaring him wanted for simply carrying out his professional duties as a journalist, adding that he did most of his work with “total allegiance and sacrifice to the Federal Republic of Nigeria”. “We want to be doubly sure that those we are in touch with are who they claim to be”.
The video showed a masked man in camouflage guarding most of the girls who were wearing long Islamic gowns. The video purports to show the bodies of some of those killed, but some experts have warned that the footage doesn’t seem consistent with an airstrike and might be staged.
His and other parents’ similar reactions were prompted after Boko Haram released a video over the weekend claiming that while the group still had the schoolgirls, some of them had been killed from airstrikes meant for its militants.
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Throughout previous year the military announced the rescue of hundreds of people, majority women and children, who have been kidnapped by the Islamists.
