Nigerian soldiers have found one of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram operatives eight years ago in the conflict-torn northeast, the military has said.
The April 2014 attack on a girls’ boarding school in the town of Chibok and the mass kidnapping that followed sparked international outrage and a global campaign called #BringBackOurGirls.
The military said on Twitter on Wednesday that troops on patrol had found the young woman, Mary Ngoshe, carrying a baby near Ngoshe village.
“Troops of 26 Task Force Brigade on patrol around Ngoshe in Borno State on June 14, 2022 intercepted one Ms Mary Ngoshe and her son,” the statement said.
“She is believed to be one of the abducted girls from GGSS (Government Girls Secondary School) Chibok in 2014,” it added, releasing a picture of a young woman and a child.
Of the 276 pupils aged 12 to 17 who were abducted by the group on April 14, 2014, 57 of the girls managed to escape by jumping off trucks they had been herded on. Eighty-two others were later released in exchange for some detained Boko Haram commanders following back-channel talks with the Nigerian government.
More than a hundred girls are still missing. Some are believed to have been married off to fighters according to propaganda videos released by Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s late leader. Since the Chibok school mass abduction, different armed groups have carried out several mass abductions and deadly attacks on schools in northern Nigeria.
The violence has contributed to keeping students out of schools, and the UN estimates that more than 18.5 million Nigerian children have no access to education.
- An Al Jazeera report