Hopes for other missing Chibok students as rescued schoolgirl meets Nigerian president
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Amina Nkeki in the office of Borno state governor Kashim Shettima Picture: Nigerian Army
A Nigerian schoolgirl with Boko Harammilitants met President Muhammadu Buhari today – amid hopesshe can shed light on the fate of 218 other abducted Chibokgirls.
Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki, who was flown in from the northeastregional capital Maiduguri two days after her rescue, wore aveil and multi-coloured dress as security guards escorted herinto Buhari’s office in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
She was accompanied by her mother Binta and Nigeria’sMinister of Defence and National Security Adviser.
Soldiers working with a civilian vigilante group found Amina two days ago near Damboa, south of Maiduguri. Officials confirmedshe was one of 219 girls abducted from the government school inChibok in April 2014.
She was found with her four-month-old baby while a“suspected Boko Haram terrorist” called Mohammed Hayatu, whosaid he was Amina’s husband, was also detained, the army said.
Pictures released by the Nigerian military todayshowed the clean-shaven man in a white shirt and cream slackssitting beside Amina on a hospital bed cradling the infant inhis arms.
Amina’s rescue should give a boost to Buhari, a formermilitary ruler who made crushing the Boko Haram Islamistinsurgency a pillar of his presidential campaign in 2015.
However, an assertion from activist group #BringBackOurGirlsthat the remining abductees were under heavy Boko Haram guard inthe Sambisa Forest, the jihadists’ final stronghold, will putpressure on him to send in rescue squads.
Boko Haram captured 276 girls in their night-time raid onChibok, one of the most audacious assaults of a seven-year-oldinsurgency to set up an Islamic state in the north.
A #BringBackOurGirls protest in the Nigerian capital Abuja
More than 15,000 people have been killed and two milliondisplaced in Nigeria and neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
Some girls escaped in the melee but parents of the remaining219 accused then-President Goodluck Jonathan of not doing enoughto find their daughters, whose disappearance led to a globalcampaign #BringBackOurGirls.
Amina’s mother last year spoke of her daughter’s fear ofBoko Haram but of her joy at attending school and doing well ather studies.
She told the Murtala Muhammed Foundation, a Nigeriannon-profit organisation researching a book on the Chibok girls,that she was not sure of the age of Amina, the youngest of her13 children although only three survived their early years.
“She always sewed her own clothes,” her mother said in theinterview released to the Thomson Reuters Foundation by AishaOyebode of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation.
Binta said Amina’s father died some months after hisdaughter was abducted.
“After Amina was kidnapped, only two (of our children) areleft alive,” she said, adding her son and daughter live inLagos.
She said she constantly thought of her lost daughter, whohad always helped her around the house.
“(My son) said I should take it easy and stop crying,” shetold the Foundation. “He reminded me that I am not the onlyparent who lost a child.”
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