Two kidnapped girls freed after 8 years
LAGOS: Nigerian troops have found two former schoolgirls who were abducted by Boko Haram jihadists eight years ago, the military said on Tuesday, freeing some of the last victims of the 2014 Chibok abduction.
The two women each carried babies on their laps as they were presented by the military, after captivity with militants who stormed their school in April, 2014 in northeast Nigeria in a mass kidnapping that sparked international outrage.
Major-General Christopher Musa, the military commander of troops in the region, told reporters the girls were found on June 12 and 14 in two different locations by troops.
“We are very lucky to have been able to recover two of the Chibok girls,” Maj Gen Musa said.
Dozens of Boko Haram militants stormed the Chibok girls’ boarding school in 2014 and packed 276 pupils, aged 12-17, at the time into trucks in the jihadist group’s first mass school abduction.
Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape by jumping from the trucks shortly after their abduction while 80 were released in exchange for some detained Boko Haram commanders following negotiations with the Nigerian government.
In the recent releases, one of the women, Hauwa Joseph, was found along with other civilians on June 12 around Bama after troops dislodged a Boko Haram camp, while the other, Mary Dauda, was found later outside Ngoshe village in Gwoza district, near the border with Cameroon.
On June 15 the military said on Twitter that they had found one of the Chibok girls named Mary Ngoshe. She turned out to be Mary Dauda.
“I was nine when we were kidnapped from our school in Chibok and I was married off not long ago and had this child,” she told reporters at the military headquarters.
Her husband and father-in-law were killed in a military raid and she was left to fend for herself and her 14-monthold son.
Thousands of Boko Haram fighters and families have been surrendering over the last year, fleeing government bombardments and infighting with the rival group Islamic State West Africa Province. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced 2.2 million more since 2009.