Chibok Girls’ Parents Learning If Daughters Among Those Freed Via Media
Parents of the missing Chibok girls are slowly learning if their daughters were among the 82 freed by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria three days ago.
The girls’ names were put on Twitter by the presidency on Sunday. They were flown to the capital Abuja.
But in Chibok, their home region in north-eastern Nigeria, not everyone has access to the social media site.
It is unclear if the government has made other attempts to let them know if their daughters are now safe.
On Monday, people were checking the newspapers to see who was on the list and decide whether to make the journey to Abuja, according to the Associated Press news agency.
Even parents in Abuja – where the 82 girls were flown to in order to meet President Muhammadu Buhari before he left the country for medical treatment – were waiting to see if they would be reunited with their daughters.
Esther Yakubu told the BBC that the last three years had been a “horrible nightmare” but that even the possibility of her daughter having been rescued was giving her hope.
“Whether she is among the freed ones or not, I am very happy,” she said. “We started this year with 24 (returned girls) and now we have 106. It is a large number, and we have hope that if they are alive, they will come back.
“I have never been happier in my life like today. I am a mother. I accept any child that is back. My baby will be back soon, if she is among them or if she isn’t,” she said.
It is being reported that the girls were handed over on Saturday in exchange for five Boko Haram suspects after negotiations – a deal which has been criticised by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi.
In a statement, the PDP faction said the exchange had allowed terrorists to escape punishment and would embolden them to carry out further kidnappings, while the “piecemeal” release of the girls meant they still held bargaining chips.
Boko Haram is thought to still be holding more than 100 of the original 276 girls taken from a school in north-eastern Nigeria in 2014.
However, they are far from the only people abducted by the extremist group. Amnesty International has recorded 41 cases of mass abductions in the last three years. It puts the number of women and children kidnapped at a minimum of 2,000.
