Two former Chibok schoolgirls who were abducted by Boko Haram extremists eight years ago have been found by Nigerian troops, the military announced on Tuesday, June 21, liberating some of the final captives from the 2014 kidnapping.
After being held captive by terrorists who invaded their school in northeast Nigeria in April 2014 in a mass kidnapping that sparked international outcry, the two women were introduced by the military while each had babies on their laps.
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The girls were discovered by forces on June 12 and June 14 in two distinct places, according to Major-General Christopher Musa, the military commander of the troops in the area.
Musa said;
We are very lucky to have been able to recover two of the Chibok girls.
In the first mass school kidnapping carried out by Boko Haram, dozens of terrorists raided the Chibok girls’ boarding school in 2014 and loaded 276 students, who were between the ages of 12 and 17, into vehicles.
Shortly after being kidnapped, fifty-seven of the girls were able to escape by jumping from the trucks, and 80 others were freed in return for three Boko Haram commanders who had been imprisoned as a result of negotiations with the Nigerian government.
According to current reports, one of the ladies, Hauwa Joseph, was discovered on June 12 around Bama with other civilians after troops stormed a Boko Haram camp, while Mary Dauda was discovered later outside Ngoshe village in Gwoza region, close to the Cameroonian border.
On June 15 the military said on Twitter that they had found one of the Chibok girls named Mary Ngoshe. She turned out to be Mary Dauda.
Joseph told reporters at the military headquarters;
I was nine when we were kidnapped from our school in Chibok and I was married off not long ago and had this child.
We were abandoned, no one cared to look after us. We were not being fed.
Joseph’s husband and father-in-law were killed in a military raid and she was left to fend for herself and her 14-month-old son.
Dauda, who was 18 when she was kidnapped was married at different times to Boko Haram fighters in the group’s enclave in the Sambisa forest.
Dauda said about life under Boko Haram;
They would starve and beat you if you refused to pray.
She decided to flee and told her husband she was visiting another Chibok girl in Dutse village near Ngoshe, close to the border with Cameroon.
With the help of an old man who lived outside the village with his family, Dauda trekked all night to Ngoshe where she surrendered to troops in the morning.
All the remaining Chibok girls have been married with children. I left more than 20 of them in Sambisa. I’m so happy I’m back.
