There were emotional scenes on Saturday as 82 kidnapped “Chibok girls” released by Boko Haram militants earlier this month were reunited with their parents.
At the reunion in Abuja, fathers gripped their daughters in tight hugs, while mothers shrieked with joy, wiping away tears streaming from their eyes.
One beaming father picked his daughter up and swung her around in the air.
Photo: AP
They had not seen each other since April 2014, when the extremists snatched more than 200 schoolgirls from their dormitories in northeastern Nigeria.
“I’m feeling very happy, I was dancing with her, she’s very happy,” said Yakubu Nkeki, whose niece Maimuna — whom he raised as his own child — was among the 82 released.
“Everyone was dancing today, even the old ones, everyone was dancing,” Nkeki told reporters. “All of us had lost hope, we thought the girls would not be returned.”
Nigerian Minister for Women Aisha Alhassan has said that the government’s goal is to have all the rescued Chibok girls back in school by September.
However, the Nigerian government has been criticized for keeping the girls in their custody and limiting access to their parents.
“Authorities should clarify to families whether the rescued girls are being held in preventive detention or as criminal suspects,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement this month.
The Nigerian government should also be working to secure the release of all those kidnapped by Boko Haram, not just the schoolgirls, the organization said.
“While the Chibok girls are the highest profile victims of Boko Haram’s abductions, authorities should extend the negotiations for release to other missing adults and children,” it said.
The Nigerian government has said it is still in talks to release the remaining 113 girls in captivity.
Since the time of the Chibok kidnapping in 2014, Boko Haram has lost significant swaths of territory to the Nigerian government.
However, the extremists still pose a threat to the ravaged region, which is suffering from a food crisis as a result of the eight-year insurgency that has left at least 20,000 people dead and displaced more than 2.6 million from their homes.
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