Parents demand swap of Chibok girls for Boko Haram detainees

7 years ago

Parents demand swap of Chibok girls for Boko Haram detainees

The BringBackOurGirls group and the parents of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls on Sunday demanded that the Federal Government swap detained Boko Haram members for the girls who have been in captivity for over two years.

This followed the video of the girls released by the sect on Sunday.

Boko Haram is holding more than 200 of the 276 final-year girls it seized from Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State, in April 2014.

Some of them escaped, but 215 girls remain missing. In May 2016, one of them, Amina Ali, was rescued.

In the video released by the Abubakar Shekau faction, Boko Haram claimed that some of the girls were killed by air strikes launched by the Nigerian Air Force on their hideouts.

The new video, more than 11 minutes long, showed a masked armed man standing in front of several girls, whom he claimed were the over 200 girls abducted from their hostel at the GSS in 2014.

The man stated that the video was released to send a message to the parents of the girls to beg the government to release Boko Haram members in detention centres in exchange for the girls.

He said, ‘‘It pleased God to let us have these girls in our captivity for over two years now. Our first message is to the parents of the girls to let them know that their daughters are still with us; some of them.

‘‘ I also want to tell them to beg the Nigerian government to release our brethren, especially those in Maiduguri, Lagos and Abuja and other places across Nigeria. They should be released immediately.

‘‘You all knew that we had the girls, but God never allowed you to know their location and you will never know by God’s grace. You keep lying in your media that you will rescue them; they have been with us for over two years, yet you don’t know where they are. You have been lying about these girls.

‘‘For over two years that we have been with these girls, about 40 of them have been married, some are dead as a result of airstrikes by infidels. We will show you a video of how your own aircraft dropped a bomb that killed some of these girls. Some of the girls have suffered fractures and other forms of injuries as a result of the air strikes.

‘‘As you can see, these are the girls, all we want is for you to release our brethren, otherwise, you will never get these girls, God willing. This is our message to the Federal Government and the parents of the Chibok girls.

‘‘As long as the government does not release our people, we will also never release these girls.