By Segun Adeyemi
Lagos, Nigeria (PANA) – On April 14, 2014, 276 girls were abducted from their school, the Government Secondary School in Chibok, in Nigeria’s North-east Borno State, in the early hours of the day by Boko Haram terrorists.
One year on, 219 of them remain missing and are not any closer home than they have been any day since their abduction, while the 57 others who managed to escape from the clutches of the deadly insurgents are picking up the pieces of their lives that were shattered that ill-fated day of their abduction.
While there have been reported sightings of the girls, especially in Gwoza which was recently liberated from the insurgents after they captured and declared it their headquarters, such could not be independently verified.
So where are the Chibok girls? Are they alive or dead? Will they ever be found and returned home safely? These are some of the questions agitating the minds of many concerned citizens, including the parents of the girls.
Nigeria’s federal government, which has been widely criticised first for waiting for 19 days before even acknowledging the girls were missing and also for not doing enough thereafter to rescue them, expressed the belief that the girls are still alive and will be rescued.
Security analysts fear that if the girls are not found in Sambisa Forest, which seems to be the last possible place to keep such a large number of girls together, then they might indeed have been married off to insurgents who have taken them across the borders or they may have been engaged in suicide bombing, especially as many young women have been identified as the perpetrators of a series of deadly suicide bombings before the latest military offensive.
They said the incoming government of retired army general Muhammadu Buhari, who defeated incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in the country’s presidential election 28 March – partly on the platform that he will intensify the fight against Boko Haram and find the missing girls – will be more likely to find the girls, if indeed they are still alive.
