275 Rescued Women, Children from Sambisa Arrive Yola

in Yola

in Abuja and Two hundred and seventy five out of the over 500 women, girls and children, who are victims of Boko Haram insurgents rescued by the military from Sambisa forest, have arrived Yola, the Adamawa State capital yesterday at 7:30pm under heavy security.

As this was happening, the Nigerian military continued the identification and profiling of the rescued victims at different times last week from the notorious Sambisa forest in order to help determine their places of origin and where they were captured by the Boko Haram terrorists.

At the Malkohi IDP’s camp designated for the formal handover of the rescued victims, the acting Brigade Commander, 23rd Armoured Brigade, Col. ABA Popoola, noted that the military had proven its worth by rescuing the victims.

“On behalf of the Army, we hand over to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) the rescued victims of Boko Haram from Sambisa forest for proper welfare,” he said.

Popoola explained that the army had no facilities to take care of the 275 rescued IDPs urging NEMA to take adequate care of the rescued people.

While receiving the rescued victims, Director Search and Rescue Operations, NEMA, Air Commodore Charles Otegbade (rtd), said his agency would leave no stone unturned in assisting the victims as he said already provisions had been made for their feeding, Medicare and accommodation for total rehabilitation.

He said the rescued persons had sustained various degrees of ailments including fractures and dislocations adding that 22 of them were rushed to hospitals.

He also said all the victims had been fully registered upon arrival noting that most of the victims were children although their statistics had not been taken in order to separate the two.

Otegbade commended the Nigerian troops for rescuing a large number of abducted persons.

However the rescued women complained that they endured three days of tortuous journey after they were rescued before finally arriving Yola.

They said some of them had been in the insurgent’s camp for more a year adding that sometimes they were beaten by the insurgents for going against their injunction.

One of the drivers that brought the victims, who identified himself as Abacha noted that the journey was delayed due to mopping up operations been conducted by the military advance rescue team, so as to evade any land mine that might have been planted by the insurgents.

But he thanked God that they arrived Yola safely without much problems noting that their problem was feeding, in addition to the injuries they sustained during their sojourn in the hands of the insurgents,

Their disheveled and gaunt looks have elicited sympathy from onlookers as many of them looked hunger stricken as the children kept wailing as a result of illness and malnutrition.

Many of the women and children had to be assisted as they could not walk on their own with some of them unable to alight from the vehicles that brought them from Sambisa following exhaustion and hunger

The military has placed the freed hostages on intensive medical care in a secured location as most of them are said to be weak, sickly and maltreated.

A military source told THISDAY yesterday that proper identification of the women could not be completed without taking them through the process of rehabilitation, adding that apart from their place of origin, “the information regarding the time of their capture would be crucial”.

The source noted that while the main focus was to free all hostages, however, the process also involved special attention towards identifying who among the freed women and girls are part of the girls kidnapped from the Government Secondary School, Chibok on April 14, 2014.

“However, this cannot be possible without first rehabilitating the girls. This is why we want to appeal to the members of the public to be patient so that we can properly ascertain where these women and girls were actually kidnapped from. Let us not be hasty with our information and return back to the error of the past where information has to be retracted. This time around the military wants to ensure the job and release of information regarding these women are done in a thorough and professional manner.

“Also, mind you that there are women and girls captured from different parts of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe and not just the Chibok girls. Our fear is that some the Chibok girls might either be scattered somewhere else or killed. We cannot say for sure until the vetting is complete and Sambisa is completely freed as we may still rescue more as the offensive continues”, the source said.