Chibok Girls, 3 Years Later: Anguished Parents Still Wait
The three girls were among nearly 300 female students kidnapped on April 15, 2014, when members of Boko Haram stormed
their boarding school in the village of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria during the week of final exams.
Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno State, where Chibok is, said he
and his wife had visited the girls and they "are absolutely in the best frame of mind to return to school." "The focus of the world is on the Chibok girls, but there are good reasons," he said.
Rotimi Olawale, a group spokesman, said advocates feared
that if the remaining Chibok students were not rescued soon, officials might be distracted by the nation’s other crises, including an economic recession, and by elections next year.
The report said 27 children had been used in suicide attacks in the first three months of 2017 compared with nine during the same period last year.
When one of the girls from Chibok was found roaming in the forest last year,
and a few weeks later, in October, when a group of 21 girls was released, the Galangs listened intently for word of their own daughters’ fate.
Since that day three years ago, the group has burned villages, killed residents
and taken the fight to three other nearby nations, forcing nearly three million people in the region from their homes.
Officials said some of the freed girls told them that a handful of their captive
classmates died during childbirth or in military raids on Boko Haram camps.