“The military instead, should try to figure how to work with the journalist and the other lady, who they were declaring wanted”.
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The fighter also said some girls had been killed by air strikes.
Sources believe the timing of this new video is no coincidence as it comes on the back of a leadership crisis within Boko Haram.
NEWS BRIEF The Nigerian militant group that kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls more than two years ago has released a video purportedly showing dozens of them alive.
The armed group, which has attacked both Muslims and Christians, seized 276 students from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014.
He said, “The government is in touch with those behind the video”.
In the video, a masked man appears with dozens of girls.
Authorities said in May that one of the missing girls had been found, and President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to rescue the others.
The mass kidnapping of the schoolgirls from the town of Chibok provoked global outrage and brought unprecedented attention to Boko Haram and its bloody quest to create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly-Muslim north.
Last week, Islamic State, to which Boko Haram pledges allegiance, announced Abu Musab al-Barnawi as the new leader of Boko Haram but questions remain over the status of erstwhile leader, Abubakar Shekau.
The masked man said claimed that almost 40 of the girls have been married off and demanded the release of prisoners in return for the setting the girls free.
“Presently, some of the girls are crippled, some are terribly sick and some of them, as I had said, died during bombardment by the Nigerian military”, the fighter says on the video, according to the AP.
He highlighted his “status as a Nigerian journalist who has reported extensively, painstakingly and consistently on the Boko Haram menace in the country since 2006 is an open book known to Nigerians and the worldwide community”.
In the background, several girls wearing Islamic clothing look visibly distressed and dab their eyes. A father of one of the girls told the BBC he saw his daughter in the video.
While the future of their daughter remains uncertain, Esther and her husband Yakubu Kabu remain hopeful, as the video is the first proof that Maida is alive since she was taken from her school in 2014.
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Hadiza Usman, a leader of the “Bring Back Our Girls” movement, told AFP that he had seen the video and is contacting parents in order to confirm the identities of the girls.
