Cletus Idogo, Abuja.
Fifty-seven Chibok school girls being held by Boko Haram have been sighted in two villages in Cameroon, parents of the abducted girls told newsmen.
The girls were seen by other female captives who at different times were kept by the insurgents in the two villages in northern part of Cameroon, the Chairman of Chibok Girls Parents Association, Yakubu Nkenke, Daily Trust reported.
Nkenke said the girls who escaped and returned to their village near Chibok, disclosed that the 57 girls were broken into two groups and held in Garin Magaji and Garin Mallam villages located in Marwa in northern Cameroon.
According to him, all the girls were married off to Boko Haram fighters across the border and many of them had children.
“Some of the captives escaped from the villages and spent months in military facility in Bama, where they were screened before they were finally released. One of them told us she met many of our abducted girls in two Cameroonian villages”, he disclosed.
“Seven of the abducted Chibok girls are living in Garin Magaji, while 50 others are held in Garin Mallam where they live with their husbands and children,” he added.
Nkenke said testimonies from parents as well as records in the association’s register matched the names of the girls mentioned by the escapees.
Calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to collaborate with his Cameroonian counterpart to rescue the girls, Nkenke said he believed the military had got the information when they screened the escapees in Bama five months ago.
The Chibok leader noted that the information had thrown Chibok community into confusion and grief as parents expected the authorities to swing into action.
Osun Daily had reported on Friday that 25 parents of the abducted girls have died.
However, Nkenke reiterated that the parents remained grateful to the federal government under Buhari, for negotiating the release of 112 girls and rescuing four others.
“Following the visit to Dapchi town by a federal government delegation to meet the parents of Leah Sharibu, the only remaining Dapchi school girl in Boko Haram captivity, the parents of more than 100 Chibok girls still with the insurgents called on President Buhari to extend a similar gesture to Chibok.
“The parents trust the Buhari administration because they fulfilled their promises on the freed 103 girls. Even the four who escaped on their own were able to make it because of the pressure mounted on the insurgents. But as human beings they feel it is taking too long to bring back their children after they were told it would happen soon”, he said.
Meanwhile, a former Boko Haram female captive, Zainab, who escaped three months ago told our correspondent that she lived with three Chibok girls in a mountain community, Dutsen Ibrahim, around Gwoza in Borno State, near the Cameroon border.
“I met some of the Chibok girls in Sambisa, when I lived with my first Boko Haram husband in Sambisa. After my husband died in a battle, I was married to another man, Nuru and we moved to Dutsen Ibrahim, near Ngoshe. There I met three Chibok girls. One of them now bears the Muslim name, Zainab but I don’t know her Christian name. The other one is Yagana,” she said.
When contacted, Col. Clement Nwachukwu, the Media Coordinator, Operation Lafiya Dole, said he could not comment on the matter as he had been outside Maiduguri, his operational base and he was therefore not aware of such development.
“I am in a noisy environment, I am currently in Biu for an assignment, so I don’t have update on what is going on there”, Col. Nwachukwu said.
