A second girl kidnapped alongside more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram nearly two years ago has been rescued, Nigeria’s army has said.
The first rescuee earlier met the country’s President Muhammadu Buhari.
An emailed statement carried by PR Nigeria, an official government agency, cited army spokesman Sani Usman “confirming the rescue of another Chibok girl this evening”.
Some 57 of the 276 girls abducted from the remote town in northeast Nigeria on April 14, 2014, escaped during the abduction, but parents of the remaining 219 accused then-president Goodluck Jonathan of not doing enough to find their daughters, AFP reported.
The abduction brought worldwide attention to the conflict, although until Amina and the latest student were found, there were few signs that any release was imminent.
Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki, the first girl to be rescued, was found by soldiers working with a vigilante group on Tuesday near Damboa, south of Maiduguri in the remote northeast. Officials confirmed Amina was one of the 219 girls abducted from the government school in Chibok in April 2014.
The governor’s comments came shortly after Amina met Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who voiced fresh hope for the recovery of the more than 200 others still being held.
Buhari said he was “delighted” at her release and the government was doing “all it can to rescue the remaining Chibok girls”.
The government would, he said, make it a priority that Amina, who has a four-month old baby, is able to return to school.
Amina is said to have told her relatives at a brief reunion at the family home in Mbalala, near Chibok, that most of the girls were still in the Sambisa Forest area of Borno state, but that six had died.
After Amina was discovered, the army said it had detained a suspected Boko Haram militant called Mohammed Hayatu who said he was her husband.
“We believe that in the coming weeks we shall recover the rest of the girls,” Governor Kashim Shettima told reporters. “The military is already moving into the forest.”
The governor of Borno state, in which Chibok is located, said the army was drawing up plans and moving into a Boko Haram forest stronghold to rescue the remaining girls.
Boko Haram has been waging a seven-year insurgency to set up a state in the area. The militant group, which last year pledged loyalty to the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group, still regularly stages suicide bombings and has used kidnapping as a weapon of war in the conflict.
The extremist group has killed at least 20,000 people, forced 2.6 million from their homes and devastated the northeast since 2009.
