Community to govt: Let freed Chibok girls reunite with families
The Kibaku Area Development Association has asked the Borno State Government to allow the Chibok schoolgirls so far rescued from Boko Haram to reunite with their families.
The community made the demand at a press conference held at the Unity Fountain in Abuja on Sunday in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in April 2014.
On the night of April 14, 276 female students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, aged 16 to 18 and mostly Christians, were kidnapped by the fundamentalist group, Boko Haram.
Before the raid, the school had been closed for four weeks due to deteriorating security conditions, but the girls were in school to take final exams in Physics.
A few hours before the raid, residents in Chibok reportedly received phone calls from neighbouring villages, warning of the incoming attack, as they sighted convoys containing armed insurgents driving in the direction of the town.
The terrorists reportedly broke into the school, dressed in military camouflage and pretended to be soldiers of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
The attack lasted for about five hours, during which houses in Chibok were also burnt.
The development generated both national and international outcry against the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, with an advocacy group, Bring Back Our Girls, formed to raise awareness and collaborate with the families and Chibok community to demand government action on the girls.
A decade later, the fate of 89 of the girls remains uncertain, while some of them have regained freedom.
Some of the schoolgirls had escaped immediately following the incident by jumping from the trucks in which they were being transported, and others were rescued by the Nigerian Armed Forces on various occasions.
According to the Kibaku Area Development Association, some of those rescued have been in the custody of the Borno State government and are yet to be reunited with their families.
Speaking during the Abuja press conference on Sunday, the National President of the Kibaku community (otherwise known as Chibok), Dauda Iliya, decried what he termed the second captivity of the released girls by the Borno State Government.
“We demand the urgent release of the rescued girls in the custody of the Borno State government to their families and not to anybody, nor the terrorists, the so-called repentant terrorists that were in the first place their abductors.
“The girls’ consent and that of their parents and guardians were not sought before they were abducted. As such, what is the basis to seek their consent before they are allowed to be returned to their parents? We demand that we are availed all the rescued daughters at home and in school, for any organisation or group that wants to support them.Punch
