Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Snatched girls still missing
DAPCHI: The governor of Nigeria’s Yobe state has told residents of the village of Dapchi in person that 76 of their schoolgirls who were reported to have been rescued from Islamist Boko Haram kidnappers were in fact still missing.
His government on Wednesday said the schoolgirls had been rescued by the military, sparking celebration in the streets.
But a day later, Ibrahim Gaidam told villagers the girls were still unaccounted for, according to an apologetic statement from his spokesman.
“The government said yesterday the girls have been found, then the governor came today to say the soldiers are yet to find them,” said Ali Maidoya, who lives in Dapchi. “Why did they lie to us before?”
The students’ disappearance may be one of the largest since Boko Haram abducted more than 270 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014. That case drew global attention to the nine-year insurgency, which has sparked what the UN has called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Boko Haram insurgents drove into Dapchi on Monday evening in trucks, some of them camouflaged and mounted with heavy guns, and attacked the girls’ school, sending hundreds of pupils fleeing.
On Wednesday, one witness told Reuters he had seen three trucks filled with weeping girls as he was forced by the militants to guide them away from the region.
There is confusion over the number now missing, with estimates ranging from around 50 to more than 100.
The attack is likely to have been carried out by a faction of Boko Haram allied with Islamic State, two sources told Reuters, declining to be identified.
The kidnapping of the Dapchi schoolgirls may have been carried out in the hope of securing a multimillion-euro ransom as as paid when when the more than 250 Chibok girls were kidnapped in April 2014, said a source. – Reuters/African News Agency (ANA)