Nigerian soldiers have located one of the more than 200 schoolgirls that were kidnapped by the operatives of Boko Haram almost eight years ago in the northeast region, stated the military.
The abduction, which took place in April 2014 in a girls’ boarding school in the town of Chibok, and the mass abduction that created outrage as well as ignited a global campaign called #BringBackOurGirls.
On Twitter, the military stated on Wednesday, June 15, that troops were on patrol when they found the young woman, Mary Ngoshe, carrying a baby around the Ngoshe village.
The statement read, “Troops of 26 Task Force Brigade on patrol near Ngoshe in Borno State on June 14 2022, thwarted one Mrs Mary Ngoshe and her son.”
“She is considered to be one of the kidnapped girls from GGSS (Government Girls Secondary School) Chibok in 2014,” it further added while releasing a picture of a young woman and a child.
Out of the 276 students aged between 12 to 17 who were kidnapped by the group on April 14, 2014, 57 of them managed to flee by jumping off the trucks they were being taken away on.
Later, 82 others were retained in exchange for some captured Boko Haram commanders following back-channel discussions with the Nigerian government.
More than a hundred girls are still missing since the abduction took place and are nowhere to be found. Some are supposed to have been married off to fighters, as per propaganda videos released by Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s late leader.
Since the Chibok school group kidnapping, different armed groups have carried out many mass abductions and fatal attacks on schools in northern Nigeria.
The brutality has donated to keeping students out of schools, and the UN calculates that more than 18.5 million Nigerian children have no access to proper education.