MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA // ABUJA // Eighty-two of the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria in 2014 arrived in Abuja on Sunday to meet President Muhammadu Buhari after a prisoner swap deal secured their release.
Presidency spokesman Femi Adesina said the schoolgirls from Chibok, in Borno state, were met at the capital’s airport by Mr Buhari’s chief of staff, Abba Kyari.
Military and civilian militia sources in the town of Banki, on the border with Cameroon, said the girls had left for Borno state capital Maiduguri on board six military helicopters at 6:10am. One source said one of the girls was carrying a baby with her, a boy of less than two years of age.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it “facilitated the safe return” of the girls as a “neutral intermediary” and tweeted photographs of a line of girls boarding a military helicopter.
A meeting with president Buhari, who was swept to power in 2015 on a promise to defeat Boko Haram, was scheduled for 4:00pm local time, officials in Abuja said.
The presidency announced late on Saturday that months of talks with the extremists had “yielded results” some six months after 21 other Chibok girls were freed with the help of international mediators last October.
At statement said, “After lengthy negotiations, our security agencies have taken back these girls, in exchange for some Boko Haram suspects held by the authorities.”
No details were given about how many suspects were released or their identities. But they are thought to include three Chadian nationals, allegedly senior commanders under Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau.
Shehu Sani, a Nigerian senator who has been involved in previous negotiations, said the talks lasted for “three to four months”. The government would now work on securing the release of the remaining hostages, he added.
This is the largest release negotiated yet in the battle to save the girls whose mass abduction exposed the mounting threat posed by the ISIL-linked fighters.
President Buhari tweeted photographs showing dozens of the freed girls at State House, the official presidential residence, along with the message, “We’ve always made it clear that we will do everything in our power to ensure the freedom & safe return of our daughters & of all BH captives.”
Boko Haram fighters stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on the evening of April 14, 2014, and kidnapped 276 teenaged girls who were preparing to sit high school exams.
Fifty-seven managed to escape in the hours that followed but the remaining 219 were held by the group.
Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau claimed in a video message that they had converted to Islam.
The audacious kidnapping brought the insurgency to world attention, triggering global outrage that galvanised support from the former US first lady Michelle Obama and Hollywood stars in the #Bringbackourgirls campaign.
The girls have become a symbol of the Nigerian conflict. Last month, parents and supporters marked the three-year anniversary of the abduction, describing the situation as an unending “nightmare”.
But they said previous releases had given them strength.
Enoch Mark, a Christian pastor whose two daughters were among those kidnapped, said of the latest releases: “This is good news to us. We have been waiting for this day. We hope the remaining girls will soon be released.”
But some relatives did not live long enough to see their daughters released. Many of the captive girls, most of them Christians, were forced to marry their captors and give birth to children in remote forest hideouts without ever knowing if they would see their parents again. It is feared that other girls were strapped with explosives and sent on missions as suicide bombers.
As word of the latest release emerged, long-suffering family members said they were eagerly awaiting a list of names and “our hopes and expectations are high.”
Before Saturday’s release, 195 of the girls had remained captive. Now 113 of the girls remain unaccounted for, although though Mr Shekau claimed last August that some had been killed in military air strikes.
Sources in Banki said the girls were brought back to the town in ICRC vehicles late on Saturday afternoon and stayed in the military barracks there overnight.
“This is a very, very exciting news for us that we have over 80 of our girls coming back again,” said Bukky Shonibare of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. “Their life in captivity has been one that depicts suffering, it depicts the fact that they have been starved, abused, and as we have seen before some of those girls have come back with children, and some of them have also come back with news of how they have been sexually abused.”
Boko Haram has used kidnapping as a weapon of war, seizing thousands of women and children, and forcibly recruiting young men and boys into their ranks.
In a less publicised attack in November 2014, some 300 children were among about 500 people kidnapped from the town of Damasak, on the border with Niger, in the far north of Borno state. Most are still missing.
The release of the 21 girls in October last year followed talks between Boko Haram and the Nigerian authorities brokered by the ICRC and the Swiss government.
Three other girls have also been found. The first had a baby and was accompanied by a man she descitbed as her husband but the military said was a Boko Haram suspect.
Mr Shekau has previously said the girls would be released if militant fighters held in government custody were freed.
When the 21 were freed, Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu said the government was hoping to secure the release of 83 others being held by a different Boko Haram faction.
Mr Buhari late last year announced Boko Haram had been “crushed,” but the group continues to carry out attacks in northern Nigeria and neighbouring countries. Its insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people and driven 2.6 million from their homes, with millions facing starvation.
On Friday, Britain and the United States issued a security alert warning of a Boko Haram plot to kidnap foreigners in the Banki area, which led to the suspension of aid flights to the town on Saturday.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
