One of the missing Chibok schoolgirls has been found alive, along with her four-month-old baby and a suspected member of the Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group.
There are conflicting reports on how Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki was found on the outskirts of the Sambisa Forest area of the northeastern Borno state on Tuesday night. Nigeria’s army claimed that she was rescued by army troopers while Chibok community leaders said a vigilante group, named Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF), had found the wandering girl.
Whatever the circumstance of her liberation, she is now considered to be the first of the Chibok girls who has been rescued.
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped 276 girls from their secondary school in the northeastern town of Chibok in the troubled Borno State. Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape afterwards, but the fate of the remaining others is still largely unknown.
According to her own account, she was fleeing an attack on Boko Haram’s camp by government forces but actually managed to find her way out of the lush jungle only to be accidentally found by rescuers.
“When she arrived in Chibok, the people of the town were so excited, they were running everywhere to see her,” said Mallam Mphur, the chair of Chibok secondary school from which the girls were abducted.
Amina, now 19, reunited with her family and according to the Nigerian military, the man who was with her is currently under investigation at the country's joint intelligence center as it was revealed that he was a Boko Haram terrorist, named Mohammed Hayatu. She said he was her “husband.”
She also told the security forces that the remaining missing girls were all in the forest, apart from six who had died.
“Many of them need help to re-integrate their family and their community” with the risk of "mistrust, stigma and rejection” high when they return, Amina added.
Boko Haram says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government. It has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of the country since the beginning of its militancy in 2009.
The Takfiri terrorist group, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” has spread its attacks from its traditional stronghold in northeastern Nigeria to the neighboring countries of Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The terrorists have pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which is primarily wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq.