Boko Haram released a video on Friday claiming to show Chibok schoolgirls who refused to be rescued as part of last week’s swap deal that saw 82 girls freed by the Nigerian government.
In the three-minute video, a girl dressed in a veil and holding a gun says she is Maida Yakubu, one of 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014, reports Al Jazeera. Three other girls in veils sit behind her.
When asked by a man in the background why she doesn’t want to go back home to her parents, she replies: “The reason is that they live in the town of unbelief. We want them to accept Islam”.
Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu disclosed after the 82 were released that one girl had refused to leave. She declined to be part of the release deal because she had married a Boko Haram fighter, he said.
Boko Haram released a second video on the same day claiming to show five commanders that the Nigerian government freed in exchange for the 82.
Meanwhile, a week after their release, 81 of the 82 girls have still not met their families.
The only relative allowed to meet them was Yakubu Nkeki, chairman for the Chibok parents’ group and a primary school teacher who taught many of the girls, according to The Guardian. He spent three hours with his niece, Maimuna Usman, 20, and the other 81 in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, where they have been kept since their unexpected release on 7th May.
“Today is a wonderful day. I saw the girls and Maimuna. When she saw me, she ran and grabbed me and started crying. I was so overwhelmed,” said Mr Nkeki on 8th May.
But his joy was tempered by concerns over when other families would get to meet the girls and women, although he said some parents had spoken to their daughters by phone.
“[The families] want them to receive all the care from the medical staff but they also want to be reunited with them as soon as they can. We’re waiting on the government to let us know when this will be possible.”
The Nigerian government has been criticised previously for the length of time it has taken for former hostages to be reunited with their families. The 21 girls freed in October are thought to be still in the capital, Abuja – 800 kilometres away – supposedly for schooling and security reasons, although a relative of one, Peter Joseph, has said that the girls were allowed to return to Chibok but had to stay in a government facility.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Joseph said: “I think there is something that the Federal Government does not want us to know and that is why they are keeping them away. Even when they [the schoolgirls] travelled to Chibok, they were not allowed to go to their houses… You can’t ask them about their experiences in Sambisa Forest. I mean, we don’t get it. Even now that 82 girls have been rescued, what has the government done about them? Up till today, the families have not met the [newly-freed] girls.”
A government official has said the girls were being kept away from their families and friends for security reasons.
In October, 2016, following the release of the 21 girls, Nigeria’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, said they were already at “phase two” of the negotiations [to release more girls], and “there are some promises we made also about the confidentiality of the entire exercise and we intend to keep them”.
An estimated 113 Chibok schoolgirls are unaccounted for.
