Boko Haram releases video of purported Chibok girl

KANO: The Boko Haram terrorist group released late Friday a video claiming to show Chibok schoolgirls who refused to be rescued as part of a recent swap deal with the Nigerian government.
In the three-minute video, a woman who claims to be Maida Yakubu, one of the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014, is seen wearing a black veil and holding a gun.
Flanked by three other women clad in black, she proclaims her loyalty to Boko Haram, which has been fighting the government since 2009 in an uprising that has killed over 20,000 people.
When asked by a man in the background why she does not want to return home to her parents, she replies: “The reason is that they live in the town of unbelief. We want them to accept Islam.”
The woman then speaks in the local Chibok dialect for the rest of the video.
Last week, 82 schoolgirls who were kidnapped three years ago were released after negotiations between the terrorist group and the government.
Presidency spokesman Garba Shehu later disclosed that one girl had refused to leave, saying she had married a Boko Haram fighter.
Analysts said it was likely that others may have developed sympathies for their captors over time.
The militants seized the Chibok girls in April 2014, prompting global condemnation and drawing attention to the bloody insurgency.
Fifty-seven escaped in the immediate aftermath. Of the 219 who did not manage to flee, 106 have either been released or found, leaving 113 still missing.
Boko Haram released a second video on Friday claiming to show five commanders that the Nigerian government freed in exchange for the 82 Chibok girls.
In the video, a man who identifies himself as Abu Dardaa, or Money, said Boko Haram has returned to Sambisa Forest, which was long its stronghold in Borno State, and is preparing to bomb Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja.
The threat comes as Nigeria opened another round of talks for the release of more kidnapped schoolgirls.
The Nigerian military said in December that it had ousted Boko Haram from Sambisa Forest.
On Saturday, a statement by Brig. Gen. Sani Kukasheka Usman, an army spokesman, confirmed that the man was among those freed in the exchange, while calling the video “mere propaganda.”
“He was a direct beneficiary of the process that led to the release of 82 of the abducted girls, and does not have a say or capacity to do anything, therefore his threats should be ignored,” the army said.
While the militants have lost significant swathes of territory since Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015, they are still capable of launching deadly attacks on soldiers and continue to unleash suicide bombers in cities and camps for internally displaced people in Nigeria’s ravaged northeast.