President Goodluck Jonathan has
reportedly seen a new video released by Boko Haram, where the abducted school
girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, spoke about
their ordeal in the hands of the insurgents for the first time and pleaded with
him to secure their release.
The girls were reportedly ill and are
in camps located in Chad, Niger and Cameroon, with one of them nursing a broken
wrist.
The footage, not released publicly
but seen by the London-based The Mail on Sunday was taken in a jungle clearing
a month after their abduction.
A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014,
from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP
shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural
location. Boko Haram released a new video on claiming to show the missing
Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had converted to Islam and would not be
released until all militant prisoners were freed. A total of 276 girls were
abducted on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok, in Borno state,
which has a sizeable Christian community. Some 223 are still missing.
A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014,
from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP
shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural
location.
More than 250 girls were taken in a
raid on their school in Chibok on April 14 by Boko Haram terrorists.
However, Cameroon’s military
reportedly killed about 40 Boko Haram militants in the country’s northwest last
weekend, a government radio reported yesterday, a day after Nigeria labelled
the Central African nation the weakest link in its fight against the extremist
sect.
The clashes leading to the killing
occurred in the town of Kouserri, which borders Nigeria and Chad.
Cameroon, a clog in the wheel
The Federal Government regards
Cameroun as not cooperative as Niger and Chad in the fight against Boko Haram.
After a security summit in Paris two
weeks ago, Cameroon said it deployed 1,000 troops to its border to help contain
the increasingly deadly group.
A series of suspected Boko Haram
attacks in four villages in Nigeria’s restive North-East killed several people,
residents said Sunday, in the latest violence blamed on the Islamist
insurgents.
The military was not immediately
available to comment on the raids in Borno State, the hardest hit area during
Boko Haram’s five-year extremist uprising, which has killed thousands.
All of the targeted villages are in
the Gamboru Ngala district near the border with Cameroon, where Boko Haram
killed hundreds in a gruesome attack earlier last month.
The video, according to The Mail of
London, indicated that the girls looked healthy, as eight of them, dressed in
their home-made school uniforms of pale blue gingham, pleaded for release while
standing courageously in front of the camera.
They were reportedly clearly scared,
upset and trying to be brave, with each walking in turn to a spot in front of a
white sheet fixed to a crude frame between the trees.
According to The Mail, four of the
girls can be heard clearly in Hausa language stating that they were taken by
force and that they were hungry.
The video indicated that a tall girl,
aged about 18, said tearfully that “My family will be so worried”, even as
another spoke softly, saying ‘I never expected to suffer like this in my life.”
Similarly, a third girl was captured
in the video as saying ‘they have taken us away by force’, while the fourth
complained of not getting enough food.
Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau,
reportedly released the new video of the kidnapped girls praying after their
conversion to Islam.
The video, taken by an intermediary
on May 19, has been shown to President Goodluck Jonathan and was intended to
serve as ‘proof of life’ for the girls and to encourage the President to accede
to the terrorists’ demands.
Two earlier videos showed the girls
seated on the ground, dressed in hijabs, reciting the Koran,with Boko Haram
leader, Abubakar Shekau, declaring he would sell them into slavery, or marry
them off to their kidnappers, if members of his sect were not released from
prison.
The Mail said pressure from the
international community and criticism of the President’s slow response to the
kidnapping have led to a series of contradictory pronouncements from his
government. Ministers have declared they will not negotiate with Boko Haram, or
consider the release of prisoners, while official spokesmen have said ‘the
window is always open for dialogue’.
At a Paris peace summit, several West
African countries neighbouring Nigeria vowed to join in ‘outright war’ against
the terrorists. Britain, France and America pledged their support and have sent
teams of military experts and advisers to the region. Intelligence sources have
told The Mail of several rescue attempts, one
involving the release of suspected low-level Boko Haram members detained
without charges or trial.
Two attempts were aborted at the last
minute when the terrorists took fright while delivering a group of girls to a
safe location.
Last week, Chief of Defence Staff,
Alex Badeh said the government knew the location of the girls and claimed that
police and military had been ‘following them’ since the abduction. He refused
to divulge details, saying it would put the girls in further danger.
The Mail claimed that Badeh’s
announcement may have been the result of government officials seeing the new,
unpublished video and may have been able to persuade Boko Haram’s intermediary
to provide details of the location. It is believed the hostages have been split
into at least four groups.
The report said one Dr Stephen Davis,
an Australian who has advised three Nigerian presidents on how to negotiate
with the country’s militant groups, has spent the past month trying to help
free the girls.
Most Chibok girls not held in Nigeria
‘The vast majority of the Chibok girls are not being held in Nigeria,’
he said.
‘They are in camps across the
Nigerian border in Cameroon, Chad and Niger. I say the “vast majority” as I
know a small group was confirmed to me to be in Nigeria last week when we
sought to have them released.’
Saying the Federal Government has
been engaged in negotiations with Boko Haram’s spiritual leader Abubakar Shekau
in a bid to secure the girls’ release, the report quoted the Australian
describing how fraught the negotiation process has been.
‘One of that small group of girls is
ill and we had hoped we might convince the commander of the group holding her
that she should be released so we could give her medical treatment,’ Dr Davis
said.
‘There are other girls who are not
well and we have come close to having them released but their captors fear a
trap in which they will be captured in the handover process.
‘One girl has what I assume is a
broken wrist as they demonstrate to me how she holds her hand. I have been told
that others are sick and in need of medical attention.’
A military source said: ‘This has
been a race against time from the minute they were captured. As soon as the
girls left Nigerian soil, it was always going to be more difficult.
‘The government made no attempt at a
rescue until a month after they were taken. Now the situation gets more serious
by the day.
‘Any sort of attempt to get to them
would have to be cleared by the
governments of the other nations.’