The rescue of Amina Ali Nkeki, one of the 276 Chibok girls kidnapped in Borno State in 2014, by a combined team of soldiers and Civilian JTF remains a mystery to security operatives in the country. This is so because former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in February this year dismissed the possibility of ever finding these girls again.
Obasanjo while addressing students, lecturers and the Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Bamitale Omole, at the university’s Staff Club in Ile-Ife, Osun State, had declared that the 276 school girls kidnapped at Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, may never be rescued.
Obasanjo rather blamed former President Goodluck Jonathan for his nonchalance towards rescuing the girls at the early period of the kidnap. He had stated that 74 hours after their abduction was a time too late for their rescue let alone the almost two years they have remained in captivity.
The former President had maintained that anyone promising to bring back those girls was not sincere.
The expectation for the return of the girls became more hopeless when President Muhammadu Buhari he said that he did not have actionable intelligence on where the girls are held.
The abducted girls have always been suspected to be held in Sambisa Forest but some persons had doubted this suspicion. Soldiers were said to have combed the Sambisa forest without finding the girls. More so, almost all the territories the Boko Haram insurgents captured and occupied in the North East have been reclaimed, yet, there was no clue to the whereabouts of the abducted girls.
Invariably, there were fears that the abducted girls may either have been killed or married off or sold into slavery.
However, a female suicide bomber recently captured in Cameroun had claimed to be one of the abducted Chibok girls. After thorough investigation, she was found not to be among the abducted girls.
Meanwhile, the finding of Amina Ali Nkeki around the Sambisa Forest has raised new hope that the girls are still alive and that there is possibility of rescuing others; though about six of the girls are said to have died.