The 82 Nigerian schoolgirls recently released after more than three years in Boko Haram captivity were finally reunited with their families on Saturday in a public display of emotion.
Images from the scene showed brightly dressed families rushing through the crowd to hug the girls. One small group sank to their knees, with a woman raising her hands to the heavens as if in church. A beaming father picked his daughter up and swung her around in the air. Some danced. Others wept tears of joy.
“I am really happy today, I am Christmas and new year, I am very happy and I thank God,” said Godiya Joshua, whose daughter Esther was among those freed.
“I’m feeling very happy, I was dancing with her, she’s very happy,” said Yakubu Nkeki, on seeing his niece Maimuna, who he raised as his own child. “Everyone was dancing today, even the old ones, everyone was dancing. All of us had lost hope, we thought the girls would not be returned.”
The families were reunited in the capital, Abuja, where the girls were taken by Nigerian authorities after their release two weeks ago. The reunited families will attend a church service on Sunday and the parents will return home early in the week leaving the girls in the capital in the care of the government to receive therapy and training.
It was the largest release of hostages since 276 schoolgirls were abducted from their boarding school in Chibok, north-east Nigeria, in 2014 when the militants arrived while they were sleeping in their dormitories. Five commanders from the extremist group were exchanged for the girls’ freedom, and Nigeria’s government has said it would make further exchanges to bring the 113 remaining schoolgirls home. The public nature of the reunion was clearly arranged by the government to share its success with the nation.
“We have trust in this government, definitely they will rescue the rest safely and bring them back to us alive,” said Nkeki.
“Our joy is never complete until we see the complete 113, because one Chibok girl matters to all Chibok people,” said Yahi Bwata, a parent of one of the freed schoolgirls. Many of the girls, most of them Christians, were forced to marry extremists and have had children. Some have been radicalised and have refused to return. It is feared that some have been used in suicide bombings. Some parents admitted they were anxious about the effect the ordeal has had on the girls.
The mass abduction in April 2014 brought international attention to Boko Haram’s deadly insurgency in northern Nigeria, and it launched a social media-driven #BringBackOurGirls campaign that got the backing of celebrities and global figures, including then US first lady Michelle Obama. Thousands of people have been kidnapped during the extremists’ eight-year insurgency, and more than 20,000 have been killed.
In the confusion immediately after the kidnapping, 57 girls managed to escape, but the rest were driven far into the Sambisa forest. For more than three years they were moved from forest to city and to caves around north-east Nigeria. According to one source, there was plenty of food to begin with, but as government forces advanced and put pressure on Boko Haram, sometimes the girls went hungry.
The release of the 82 schoolgirls two weeks ago came after an initial group of 21 girls was released in October. Nigeria’s government has acknowledged negotiating with Boko Haram for their release, with the Swiss government and the International Committee of the Red Cross helping as mediators.
Once the deal was done the girls travelled in the dark to reach the rendezvous point and waited on the edge of a forest near the Cameroon border to be picked up and taken away in four armoured vehicles. They were dressed in dark, floor-length hijabs. After a night at an army base, the girls were taken by military helicopter to the nearby city of Maiduguri, before flying on to Abuja.
Since the latest release, many families in the remote community had been waiting for word on whether their daughters were among those freed. A government list of names circulated, and parents were asked to confirm the girls’ identities through photographs.
Both groups of freed girls have been in government care in the capital as part of a nine-month reintegration programme that President Muhammadu Buhari has said he will oversee personally. But human rights groups have criticised the government for keeping the young women for so long in the capital, far from their homes more than 550 miles away.
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