The Chairman of the Chibok Girl’s Parents Association, Mr. Yakubu Nkeki, on Friday confirmed that the second Chibok girl rescued by the Nigerian Army is not one of the 219 Chibok girls abducted over two years ago by Boko Haram fighters.
Advertisement
A second girl believed to be among the Chibok abductees was rescued Thursday evening, army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said in a late-night statement.
“During the operations, the troops killed 35 Boko Haram terrorists and recovered several arms and ammunition and other items”.
Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki, the first girl to be rescued, was found by soldiers working with a vigilante group on Tuesday near Damboa, south of Maiduguri in the remote northeast where Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency to set up an Islamic state.
“Like all Nigerians and many others around the world, I am delighted that Amina Ali is free, but it is tinged with deep sorrow with what she had to go through”, Buhari said.
A Nigeria researcher for Human Rights Watch, Mausi Segun, criticized the way authorities handled Amina in her first days of freedom, telling news agency AFP the government should have concentrated on her health, protecting and respecting her dignity “before you roll the cameras and make political capital out of her recovery”.
“It is an incontrovertible fact that that girl was among those girls that were abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok, on 14 April 2014”.
“While congratulating the combined team of Nigerian army and the Borno State Joint Task Force who rescued Amina, we call on them to intensify their efforts to free the remaining Chibok girls”.
“She added that there were three other girls who fled from Shettima Aboh when the troops invaded the area earlier today which led to their rescue”. She was later snatched from her village of Madagali, near the town of Chibok, he said.
This is coming a day after the first girl, Amina Ali, was rescued in Sambisa forest.
President Muhammadu Buhari vowed at a news conference on Thursday that Ali would continue her education and condemned the brutality of forced marriage.
Boko Haram captured 276 girls in the Chibok raid but 57 escaped in the melee.
According to the group, the rescue of Amina, one of the 200 Chibok school girls, abducted in 2014, has put both of them to shame as it has laid to rest claims by the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration that the abduction was a scam.
Advertisement
It is still unclear how Amina escaped from the clutches of Boko Haram, but the government official said it was likely as a result of the sustained military campaign in the Sambisa Forest.
