Islamist militants,
Boko Haram, released a new video purporting to show at
least 14 of the Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped on April 14, 2014.
Despite
a concerted global campaign for their release, and talks between the Federal
Government and Boko Haram, the girls shown in the recording have vowed not to
return to their parents in Chibok, Borno State.
The
20-minute-long video is the first since May 2017, when another woman, who also
claimed to be among the 276 seized from the town in Borno State said she wanted
to stay.
Both
videos will compound the suffering of the girls’ families and friends but also
indicate the extent to which they may have become influenced by their captors. All of
those who were shown on camera were wearing black or blue hijabs and at least
three were carrying babies.
One of
the students, her face covered by a veil, said: “We are the Chibok girls that
you cry for us to return to you. By the grace of Allah, we will not return to
you.
“Poor
souls, we pity our other Chibok girls who chose to return to Nigeria. Allah
blessed you and brought you to the caliphate for you to worship your creator.
“But
instead, you chose to return to unbelief.”
It was
not clear when or where the latest message, in Hausa and the local Chibok
language, was recorded or whether those who appeared on camera were under
duress.
The
woman who spoke in the video said Boko Haram factional leader, Abubakar Shekau,
has “married us off. We live in comfort. He provides us with everything. We
lack nothing,” she added.
Shekau
was also seen, firing a heavy machine gun and making a 13-minute-long sermon in
which he said the remaining girls had “understood the folly” of secular
education.
Boko Haram’s name
broadly translates into English from the Hausa that is widely spoken in
northern Nigeria as “Western education is sinful.”
The
group has repeatedly attacked and destroyed schools teaching a secular
curriculum in its campaign to create a hardline Islamic state in North East
Nigeria.
The
terrorists seized 276 students from the Government Girls Secondary School in
Chibok, in a mostly-Christian town in 2014, which triggered global condemnation.
- Sun News
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