Abducted Nigerian schoolgirl found two years after taken by Boko Haram
ABUJA, Nigeria — One of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants two years ago has been rescued along with her young child, activists and relatives said Wednesday.
The 276 girls were kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014. Some escaped, but 218 remained missing. The young woman is believed to be the first to be rescued.
The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls went viral on social media following their abduction.
Sesugh Akume, a spokesman for #BringBackOurGirls, said one of the abducted Chibok girls, Amina Ali Nkeki, was found in the fringes of the Sambisa forest by a local group of vigilantes that fights Boko Haram.
She was found with a young child in the forest near the Cameroon border, Akume said, adding that she was identified by the vice principal of her school.
Akume said the young woman has spoken with her mother. She also told the Nigerian military that the other schoolgirls are still in the forest, in the heart of the area controlled by Boko Haram, and are heavily guarded.
The young woman told her mother that some of the Chibok schoolgirls have died in captivity and the others still are being held, her family’s doctor, Idriss Danladi, told the Associated Press after talking with the mother.
The girl is "already breast-feeding a child," Tsambido Hosea Abana, a Chibok community leader in Abuja told BBC Focus on Africa. "She was saying she came out to fetch firewood. That's why the vigilantes were able to intercept her," he said.
There are differing accounts of how the woman was found. Nigeria’s military said it rescued the young woman and her baby, along with a Boko Haram suspect who claimed to be her husband.
“This is to confirm that one of the abducted Chibok school girls ... was among the persons rescued by our troops,” said the army spokesman, Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman, the AP reported.
The Nigerian government has long believed the girls were being held in the forest in northern Nigeria, but the difficulties in penetrating the dense woods made an assault and rescue dangerous for the students.
Nkeki's uncle, Yakubu Nkeki, told the AP that the 19-year-old is traumatized. He said she was taken to Chibok on Tuesday, where she was reunited with her mother before soldiers took her away. She was 17 when she was abducted.
He said he and his wife helped identify her from a picture the military had emailed to them, and her rescue brings hope that the other missing schoolgirls will be found.
"It means the others too could be discovered," he said. "it's a great relief to know that they are still alive and in the Sambisa area."
Helene Sandbu Ryeng, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund in West and Central Africa, said the organization was unable to verify the information, but if confirmed, it is “great news for her and for her family.
“She’s been in captivity for more than two years,” she told Paste BN. “This girl will face a lot of challenges.”
Ryeng said the young woman would need help in dealing with what she had been through and stressed that thousands of children were still held captive by Boko Haram, or had been forced to flee their homes by the conflict.
One concern is whether local residents shun the returning girls. A recent report by UNICEF and International Alert, a London-based charity, said more than 2,000 women and girls abducted by Boko Haram since 2012 face mistrust and persecution when they eventually return home.
Still, some expressed joy over the discovery of one of the Chibok girls.
"This goes to show that the girls are still alive and within the Sambisa Forest," said Umar Musa Kwajjafa, a teacher in a public school in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. "That the girl is carrying a baby is a sad story, meaning the girls are being used as sex slaves."
Boko Haram, whose attacks on schools have forced thousands of people to give up on getting an education, loosely translates as "Western education is forbidden" in the local Hausa language. The group has also killed thousands of Christians and Muslims over the past five years in an attempt to bring strict Islamic law to all of Nigeria.
The group recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and in the past year has increasingly used kidnapped girls as suicide bombers. Women and girls staged 39 of Boko Haram's 89 attacks last year, according to UNICEF. Some women whose attacks were foiled told authorities they had been abducted by the group.
Contributing: Jane Onyanga-Omara in London