Four of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists in Chibok, Borno State, over a month ago have reunited with their parents.
The state Commissioner for Education, Musa Inuwa Kubo disclosed this when he made a presentation before the Presidential Fact Finding Committee on Chibok attack last week in Maiduguri.
Kubo, who appeared before the committee on Friday at its sitting in Maiduguri, said the four girls were discovered after Governor Kashim Shettima directed the Ministry of Education to open data pages for families of all the girls, which should include names and pictures of the girls, class, age, including the pictures of parents.
It was during the data capturing and visits to parents that it was discovered that four girls, who were among those declared missing, had reunited with their parents but the parents failed to inform the school authority.
The commissioner was said to have been furious with the parents for keeping the government in the dark.
The four girls are believed to be amongst those that escaped into the bush and lost direction during the attack.
Still missing
Kubo told the committee that with the discovery of the four girls, 219 were still missing.
He informed the committee that after the April 14 attack on the school, the state government had made series of announcements calling on parents whose daughters might have ran home, following the attack, to bring them back so that the government could take record to ascertain the number of missing girls.
Many parents brought back their kids, while others that escaped from captivity were also returned to the school.
276 girls were initially said to have been attacked based on reports by the Borno State Police Commissioner and the State Director of Department of State Services. Of this, 53 were found and 228 were missing.
However, with the four girls found, the number of those missing stands at 219, while the rescued one are 57
Abduction not pre-arranged
Meanwhile, the Chairman of Chibok Local Government, Mr. Bana Lawal, insisted yesterday that the abduction of the girls was not pre-arranged as insinuated by some people.
The local government boss, who spoke through his representative, Mr. Musa Kolo, at stakeholders validation meeting of draft Humanitarian Response Plan for Chibok, in Abuja, yesterday, said that the abduction “though it sounds unbelievable, was not pre-arranged as alleged in some quarters.
“It was not pre-arranged. The whole village of over 100,000 people cannot lie. The terrorists have trucks, lorries and they move in a large number of over 2,000 at time.”
Location of girls not news
The council boss also said that the location of the girls was not news as the vigilante had earlier told the public that they saw the girls, but could not rescue them owing to the insurgents’ sophisticated weapons.
He said: “There is no secret about the location of the girls. Everybody knows that the girls are in Sambisa forest and a lot of people have spotted them.
“It is not news, but the security fear is how to rescue them without any collateral damage and who is going take responsibility if anything goes wrong.”
He admitted, however, that the Nigerian security forces were doing their best but that they were being hampered by several factors, including misinformation and the number of the Boko Haram fighters.
He said: “The security agencies are trying. Any time we call on them, they respond. At times there were false calls and they have been ambushed and killed.
“So the security put lot of things into consideration before they move.”
He said the community that lost two parents of the abduc-ted girls has continued to wait for the girls’ safe return.
Source: Vanguard
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