Parents
of the released Chibok school girls are eager to be re-united with
their daughters after about 3 years of being separated by the
terrorists.
Some of the released Chibok school girls
Eighty-two Chibok schoolgirls who were released after being held
for more than three years by Boko Haram will be reunited with their
parents next week, according to Nigeria’s minister for women.
Aisha Alhassan said the students’ parents will travel from the
remote northeastern town in Borno state to meet their daughters in the
capital, Abuja.
“Any parents that identified their children will be brought next week to see them,” she told a reporter at the staff quarters of the Department of State Services.
The 82 have been staying at the domestic intelligence agency
facility on the outskirts of the city since their release in a prisoner
swap deal on Saturday after months of negotiations.
The Islamist militants seized 276 girls in April 2014, triggering
global condemnation and drawing attention to the bloody insurgency.
Fifty-seven escaped in the immediate aftermath. Of the 219 who did
not manage to flee, 106 have either been released or found, leaving 113
still missing.
First Lady Aisha Buhari, whose husband President Muhammadu Buhari
was elected on a pledge to defeat Boko Haram, met some of the Chibok
girls on Wednesday.
The girls, dressed in colourful traditional ankara print dresses,
sang songs and danced in front of the cameras. The women’s minister said
the recently-released 82 would be reunited at another facility in the
capital with 24 of their classmates who were released or found last
year.
They will receive “psycho-social therapy” and “vocational training” to help them reintegrate into society.
Campaign groups and families have criticised the government for
keeping the previously released girls away from their parents but
Alhassan said they were free to come and go from the centre.
Most chose to stay in the capital, she added. The government’s goal
is to have all the girls back in school at the start of the new
academic year, she added, without specifying where.
“I believe from now to September, these other ones (the
recently released 82 girls) would have stabilised and we will be able to
take all of them back to school in September.”
Thousands of women and young girls have been abducted in the
eight-year insurgency, which has left at least 20,000 people dead and
displaced more than 2.6 million.
Information minister Lai Mohammed meanwhile indicated talks with
Boko Haram about the release of the remaining 113 girls could pave the
way for a possible end to the conflict.
“We are looking beyond the release of these girls. We are
looking a something much more comprehensive, which is the cessation of
all hostilities,” he said.