Two years after the kidnapping, Amina Ali Nkeki is believed to be the first Nigerian schoolgirl rescued from her captors.
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Officials say Amina was found close to the Cameroon border, near Sambisa forest, Boko Haram’s biggest stronghold.
More than 200 teenaged schoolgirls were abducted by the group on 14th April 2014 from Government Girls Secondary School at Chibok who were preparing for science exams. But the young woman told her mother that some of the girls have died in captivity and that the others still are being held, according to her family’s doctor, Idriss Danladi, who had spoken with the mother.
“It is gratifying to note that no casualty was recorded by our troops through the conduct of this operation”, he added. In Abuja, Obiageli Ezekwesili, one of the founders of the campaign who first broke the news of Amina’s escape, said she had provided “fantastic intelligence” to the Nigerian military about the other girls’ whereabouts as others sang “it’s no longer 219 but 218”.
Nigeria’s military has been conducting operations in the former game reserve for weeks in the hope of flushing out militants and destroying Islamist camps in the sprawling semi-desert scrubland. The Nigerian government verified a photo of one of the school girls kidnapped from Chibok.
Under Buhari’s command and aided by Nigeria’s neighbours, the army has recaptured most territory once lost to Boko Haram but the group still regularly stages suicide bombings.
Hosea Abana Tsambido, the chairman of the Chibok community in the capital, Abuja, told the BBC that Amina had been found after venturing into the forest to search for firewood.
Danladi said the young woman was found by hunters and taken with her baby to her home village of Mbalala, near Chibok, to be reunited with her mother. “They brought her to my house”.
“Many of the parents are still thinking about the where about of their children because they want to see the rest of the children back”.
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It’s estimated that 20,000 people have died in the Boko Haram insurgency and over 2.6 million people have been displaced in the region. In February, he claimed he had meant Boko Haram “can no longer mobilise enough forces to attack police and army barracks and destroy aircraft like they used to”.
