Freed Chibok Girls Reunite With Families

Twenty-one girls released last week by Boko Haram militants reunited with their parents in Abuja. The government has promised that dozens more will be freed soon.

Tears, joy and dancing erupted in Abuja late on Sunday as the parents of 21 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram met their daughters. Although the extremist group released the girls on Thursday, it had taken days for many of the relatives to arrive in the capital from the remote town of Chibok, AFP reported.

“I never expected I will see my daughter again and I pray that those girls still left behind, that God will bring them out safely the way our own daughter came out alive,” said the mother of Raha Emmanuel, one of the freed girls, speaking with AP.

Emmanuel and 275 other schoolgirls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok in April 2014. Their kidnappers were militants loyal to the Boko Haram insurgency, which not only seeks to establish a fundamentalist state in Nigeria but in its very name expresses a staunch disapproval of western-style education.

The release of 21 girls on Thursday marked the first time the government and Boko Haram successfully negotiated for a peaceful release of some of the girls. According to the government, the terrorists are willing to release 83 of the 197 still in captivity “very soon”.