In January of this year the new President Muhammadu Buhari reopened the investigation into the kidnapping but it has failed to find the girls.
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The United Nations Children’s Fund thinks 2.3 million people have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, with 1.3 million of them children.
When an unidentified cameraman questions them, they confirm that they are taken from the Chibok Government Secondary school, and claim that they have not been mistreated. According to parents of some of the missing children who spoke to CNN, the 15 girls in the video are all among those who were taken.
Angry over lack of progress to resolve one of the highest-profile mass kidnappings in the world, Nigerians marched in their country’s major cities on Thursday to demand the safe return of girls who were abducted by Boko Haram extremists two years ago from a school in Chibok.
Rifkatu Ayuba and Mary Ishay said they recognised their daughters, and another mother, Yana Galang, identified five of the missing girls. “My Saratu!” she calls.
“If I could, I would have removed her from the screen”, she said.
In the video, thought to have been made in December and obtained by CNN, 15 girls are expressionless as they state their names to a man heard off camera.
He said: “Their parents still wake up each morning not knowing whether their daughters are alive or dead, married or single or violated as slaves”.
Two years ago they are not like this but today they are two years at their other years so they are changed.
The girls were filmed saying they were being treated well but wanted to go home and be with their families.
Suicide attacks using women and young girls increase against “soft” civilian targets such as mosques, markets and bus stations, fuelling fears about Boko Haram’s use of its captives.
The new images offer the first glimpse of the girls since a video released in May 2014.
While the whereabouts of the 219 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped in April 2014 is still unknown, reports throughout the past two years suggest they may be somewhere in the forest.
CNN reported that the “proof of life” video was sent in December to negotiators trying to free the girls. “Locating the missing girls is essential for improving gender equality worldwide and discouraging future terrorism”.
Boko Haram was founded in 2002, and initially focused on opposing Western-style education.
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s information minister, has declined to comment directly on talks with Boko Haram, which has previously said it would release the girls only in exchange for captured fighters in Nigerian prisons.
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Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Chibok, said that not much had changed in the area two years on and the relatives were not confident of seeing the girls back home soon.
