Abducted Nigerian girl found two years later
Student was among 276 kidnapped from school by Boko Haram militants
ABUJA, NIGERIA One of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants two years ago was rescued along with her young child, activists and relatives said Wednesday.
The 276 girls were kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014. Some escaped, but 218 were missing.
The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls went viral on social media after their abduction. Sesugh Akume, a spokesman for #BringBackOurGirls, said Amina Ali Nkeki was found in the fringes of the Sambisa forest by a group of vigilantes that fights Boko Haram. She was found with a young child near the Cameroon border, Akume said. She was identified by the vice principal of her school.
Akume said the young woman spoke with her mother. She told the Nigerian military that the other schoolgirls are in the forest, in the heart of an area controlled by Boko Haram, and that they are heavily guarded.
Nkeki told her mother that some of the Chibok schoolgirls died in captivity, her family’s doctor, Idriss Danladi, told the Associated Press after talking with the mother.
The girl is “already breastfeeding a child,” Tsambido Hosea Abana, a Chibok community leader in Abuja told BBC Focus on Africa. “She was saying she came out to fetch firewood. That’s why the vigilantes were able to intercept her.”
There are differing accounts of how the woman was found. Nigeria’s military said it rescued the young woman and her baby, along with a Boko Haram suspect who claimed to be her husband.
“This is to confirm that one of the abducted Chibok school girls ... was among the persons rescued by our troops,” said the army spokesman, Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman, the AP reported.
The government has long said the girls were held in the forest in northern Nigeria, but the difficulties in penetrating the dense woods made an assault and rescue dangerous for the students.
Nkeki’s uncle, Yakubu Nkeki, told the AP that the 19-year-old is traumatized. He said she was tak- en to Chibok on Tuesday, where she was reunited with her mother before soldiers took her away.
He said he and his wife helped identify her from a picture the military emailed to them, and her rescue brings hope that the other schoolgirls will be found. “It’s a great relief to know that they are still alive and in the Sambisa area,” he said.
Helene Sandbu Ryeng, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund in West and Central Africa, said the organization was unable to verify the information, but if confirmed, it is “great news for her and for her family.”
“She’s been in captivity for more than two years,” she told USA TODAY. “This girl will face a lot of challenges.”
Ryeng said the young woman would need help in dealing with what she had been through and stressed that thousands of children are still held captive by Boko Haram or have been forced to flee their homes by the conflict.
One concern is whether residents shun the returning girls. A recent report by UNICEF and International Alert, a Londonbased charity, said more than 2,000 women and girls abducted by Boko Haram since 2012 face mistrust and persecution when they return home.
Some expressed joy over the discovery of one of the Chibok girls. “This goes to show that the girls are still alive and within the Sambisa Forest,” said Umar Musa Kwajjafa, a teacher in a public school in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state.