Boko Haram drops off one of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls

Susan Ishaya, one of the 276 Government Secondary School girls abducted in Chibok, Borno State in April by the dreaded Boko Haram Islamist sect, was on Sunday, September 21 set free by her captors, BusinessDay can authoritatively report.

Enoch Mark, the chairman, Association of Abducted Chibok Girls’ Parents, told BusinessDay on telephone that the teenage girl who, he said, was at the moment traumatized arrived Chibok late Sunday having spent four days between the place she was set free and Chibok.

He said: “I have been instructed to take her to Adamawa police command in Yola where she would be medically taken care of. She is traumatized at the moment because her speech is not coordinated. As I speak to you now, I am on my way to Adamawa. When she is stabilized I will encourage her to speak to you. The young lady with me here should not be up to 20 years”, he said.

Enoch, with the daughters still at the mercy of the Islamist sect, said it was the insurgents that dropped the girl off at the point where they asked her to find her way and that she wondered round many hamlets for four days before she was able to locate Chibok.

“Let me be clear to you, the military has nothing to do whatsoever about her release. It was the insurgents who decided to show her mercy, lest anybody takes the glory of her freedom. Whatever the military might be doing now is rather too late. The damage has been done already. I shed tears when I saw her. A girl of less than 20 has suddenly turned old woman. We pray others including my two daughters would be set free soon. By the time she is fully rested we should be able to get some information from her”, he said.

The Adamawa police command spokesperson, Othman Abubakar, did not answer calls to his cell phone or reply to text message sent him in an attempt to confirm if he was aware of the development.

It would be recalled that the military on Tuesday claimed to have rescued some of the girls. Shortly after, it retracted its statement.

Army spokesman, Brig-Gen Chris Olukolade, had told the BBC there were girls in military custody, but not those from Chibok as originally thought.

The abduction of the girls had caused worldwide outrage and sparked a social media campaign.

Protests were organised under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, calling on the Federal Government to do more to free the girls, who had gone to the school in Chibok from surrounding areas to take their final year exams.

Shortly after the abduction, Boko Haram released a video showing more than 100 of them and offering an exchange for prisoners.

In recent days there have been unconfirmed reports that the government has been negotiating a deal with Boko Haram to exchange the abducted girls for imprisoned Islamist fighters.







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