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Flesh-pressing, bear-hugs by Boko Haram, Dapchi girls’ parents during hostage return ceremony

Published

8 years ago

March 22, 2018

Parents of the abducted Dapchi schoolgirls released on Wednesday had a swell time with the abductors of their children in the almost one-hour interface between them and the terrorists.

Kachalla Bukar said he and other parents of the missing girls stood and watched Boko Haram drive into Dapchi in the same kind of vehicles that they used to truck the girls February 19.

The secretary of the Abducted Dapchi Girls Parents Association said he greeted the terrorists, and even took a selfie using the insurgents’ camera phones

The parents added the terrorists took their time to preach sermons to them before leaving the community.

“It was a thing of joy for us in Dapchi when suddenly we began to see trucks moving into the town at about 8:00 a.m in the morning”, said another villager, Ibrahim Hussein whose sister was among the freed girls.

“They brought the girls and then they were telling us not to go back to Western education schools; that what they did was not terrorism but rather the propagation of Islamic knowledge.”

Kachalla said he had earloer received a phone call from Gumsa town that they saw Boko Haram gunmen coming towards Dapchi with the girls.

He said when he broke the news to the villagers, they all fled in fear.

.“But we, the parents of the missing girls, did not run as other villagers did, because we cannot run and leave our girls in the hands of the Boko Haram.

“When they came, they told us that they were returning the girls not because somebody gave them money, but out of their freewill. We thanked them,’ said Kachalla.

” Then they told us that we must never return our girls to western school again; we said we will do as said. They preached to us for some time, and we said we will heed to their sermons.

“They shook our hands and asked us to forgive them for whatever pains that they might have caused us; then we shook hands and they asked us to snap photos with them using their mobile phone which we all did.”

Haruna Driver, a resident of Dapchi and father to one of the abducted girls, Amina Haruna, said he could not believe that his daughter could return to him so early.

“When the news came to me, it was like a dream. But when I saw my daughter, I and her mother shed tears of joy,” he said.

Unfortunately, they could not spend much time with her before she was taken to hospital and then to Abuja.