Nigeria’s government is negotiating the release of another 83 of the Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass abduction two-and-a-half years ago, but more than 100 others appear unwilling to leave their extremist Boko Haram captors, a community leader said on Tuesday.
The unwilling girls might have been radicalized by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return home because they were forced to marry extremists and have babies, Chibok Development Association chairman Pogu Bitrus told reporters.
Bitrus said the 21 Chibok girls freed last week in the first negotiated release between Nigeria’s government and Boko Haram should be educated abroad, because they will probably face stigma in Nigeria.
Photo: AP
The girls and their parents were reunited on Sunday and are expected to meet with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Bitrus said.
Buhari flew to Germany on an official visit on the day of the girls’ release.
Buhari on Monday said that his government is prepared to talk with Boko Haram as long as the extremists agree to involve organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was an intermediary in last week’s release.
A total of 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a school in northeastern Chibok, Nigeria, in April 2014.
Dozens escaped early on and at least half a dozen have died in captivity, according to the newly freed girls, Bitrus said.
All of those who escaped on their own have left Chibok because, even though they were held only a few hours, they were labeled “Boko Haram wives” and taunted, he said.
At least 20 of the girls are being educated in the US.
“We would prefer that they are taken away from the community and this country, because the stigmatization is going to affect them for the rest of their lives,” Bitrus said. “Even someone believed to have been abused by Boko Haram would be seen in a bad light.”
All Nigerian institutions and the freed girls’ communities and families must “stand strong” to “protect them from stigma, ostracization and rejection,” the UN special rapporteurs on the sale of children, on slavery and on the right to health said in a statement on Tuesday.
One Chibok girl, Amina Ali Nkeki, escaped in May.
Chibok Parents’ Association chairman Yakubu Nkeki said the young woman has been reunited with her freed classmates, all of whom are being treated by doctors, psychologists and trauma counselors at a hospital in the capital, Abuja, run by the Nigerian Department of State Security.
Human rights advocates and the Bring Back Our Girls movement have been asking if the girl is a detainee of the government and have been demanding she be allowed to return home, as she has requested.
Emos Lawal, father of one newly freed girl, said his daughter was “praying that the rest of them have the chance to come out.”
The freed girls have told their parents that they were separated into two groups early on in their captivity, when Boko Haram commanders gave them the choice of joining the extremists and embracing Islam, or becoming their slaves, Bitrus said.
The girls freed and those whose release is being negotiated, numbering 104, are believed to be in the group that rejected Islam and Boko Haram, he said.
The freed girls said they never saw the other girls again.
Bitrus said the freed girls were used as domestic workers and porters, but were not sexually abused.
He said that was why only one girl in the freed group is carrying a baby, and her parents have confirmed that she was pregnant when she was kidnapped.
An aid worker had told reporters that he had seen the girls on their release and that all but three carried babies.
Bitrus said that report was incorrect.
Previous negotiators in talks that failed also had it corroborated that more than 100 of the girls did not want to return to their parents, Bitrus said.
Chibok is a small and conservative Christian enclave in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria, where many parents are involved in translating the Bible into local languages and belong to the Nigerian branch of the Elgin, Illinois-based Church of the Brethren.
Nigeria’s government has denied reports that the girls were swapped for four Boko Haram commanders, or that a large ransom was paid.
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