Criticisms have continued to trail the purported refusal by Federal Government to negotiate for the release of a student of Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Yunusari local government area of Yobe State said to be detained for refusing to renounce her Christian faith.
Nathan Sharibu, father of the only student, Leah who is yet to be freed, confirmed that Boko Haram insurgents decided not to release his daughter because she refused to renounce Christ, noting “They gave her the option of converting in order to be released but she said she will never become a Muslim… I am very sad but I am also jubilating too because my daughter did not renounce her faith.
Sharibu, who spoke on RayPower FM shortly after the students were released, said he learnt that the insurgents gave his daughter the option of converting to Islam but she rejected, expressing delight over her stance and praying for her return.
Speaking on Planet 101.1 FM, Uyo-based private radio station under Akwa Ibom Mandate programme Thursday, some analysts said it was disheartening and unfortunate that the girl was detained by Boko Haram terrorists on account of her faith.
The analysts who were angry with the docility of Federal government in the release of the girl stated that allowing the insurgents to release Islamic girls portray the government as being biased and supportive of one religion.
“Why is a Christian held till now, yet most Nigerians are not rising with one voice to condemn it? Why is Federal government silent on the detention of this Christian girl? Is Nigeria no longer a secular state? Are Nigerians no longer free to practise their religion in a free and unmolested manner? Must all Nigerians be converted to one faith? Why are we so alienated by religion?” they queried.
Commenting on the questionable manner the schoolgirls were returned by the Boko Haram adherrents, the analysts further queried “How did the Boko Haram militants come into Dapchi, yet soldiers or other security operatives were not seen in the village? Why did they come with girls unescorted, stayed with the parents of the kidnapped girls, distributed their pamphlets and taught the people to refrain from patronising Western education?
They reasoned that it is questionable there is no video showing the dead bodies of the abducted schoolgirls and the released ones who left in their tattered, some clean school uniforms, returned home, looking well-dressed with expensive bags as shown in the video now viral.
“During the kidnap of Chibok girls during the era of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, most Nigerians were so enraged. They including his brethren from Niger Delta attacked him on the kidnap and other policies. They succeeded in goading him out of office. Yet, this is another administration doing some worst things to Nigerians and we are docile. We maintain a culture of silence over every issue or blunder of the present administration,” the analysts recalled.
According to them, “We should forget about political party politics. Among us in Akwa Ibom State, we should always speak with one voice. Let us forgo the hitherto attitude of giving the best meals to our visitors but giving none to our brethren languisihing in hunger.”
One of the vocal analysts, Rev. Richard Peters, lamented “My heart is bleeding. This suggests grand plan by the ruling All Progressives Party (APC)-led Federal government to islamise the country.”
Peters, the controversial preacher with African Church of Nigeria, Uyo, added “This agenda of the party. It has no ideology or interest of Nigerians. Its plan is to steal and destroy Nigeria.”
In a related development, witnesses said the militants pulled up near Dapchi police station on Wednesday and shouted that parents should pick up their daughters. Initially, villagers ran away fearing another attack. But when they realised what was happening, they began to cheer and wave at the militants, chasing after their pickup trucks, some recording videos on their phones.
According to the correspondent of The UK Guardian, members of the group waved the black and white flag used by the Islamic State and wearing balaclavas, military fatigues and ammunition belts..
“Dapchi is full of joy,” said Mohammed Mdada, who saw the girls being whipped as they were driven away a month previously. He said the militants apologised to some of the girls’ parents in their language, Kanuri, and shook their hands before driving off.
“They said that if they knew they were Muslim girls they wouldn’t have abducted them,” Mdada said. “They warned the girls that they should stay away from school and swore that if they came back and found any girl in school, they’d abduct them again and never give them back.”
One of the goals of Boko Haram – which has kidnapped thousands of girls, boys and women, forcing some of them to blow themselves up, killed thousands of others and displaced millions – is to stop children receiving what it perceives as western-style education.
Usman Mataba, whose niece was among those returned, said she had talked to the militants. “I approached them and they told me that they had brought all the girls except six – that five had died on the day they were taken,” he said. “They said they discovered they were dead when they arrived at their destination, so they buried them.”
Mdada said he had been told the five girls were trampled to death. The sixth had “refused to cooperate” with them, Mataba said.
Amnesty International later said four girls were still missing. Locals said Boko Haram also dropped off a boy who had apparently been kidnapped by accident.
Hafsat Abdullahi phoned the Guardian to say her 16-year-old sister Fatima, who had been taken, had been dropped off in Dapchi. She put her sister on the phone.
“It took us three days to get back to Dapchi,” said Fatima. “We were divided into three groups and flown in planes, and taken over rivers in boats.”
Soon after arriving back in Dapchi, the army told Fatima and her schoolmates to assemble at the village hospital.
“They took all of them to the hospital, Fatima is in the hospital now,” Hafsat said later, waiting at home to see her sister. “I heard that the chief of staff of the army is here and wants to take the girls with him to Damaturu. I don’t like that – I want her to stay.”
Their parents were not allowed in to see them, and the girls were soon put into vehicles and driven away. Their destination was Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, where they were to meet the president, Muhammadu Buhari.
In the aftermath of the Dapchi attack, Buhari said his government would negotiate with the militants, but in a statement released on Twitter on Wednesday he claimed there had been “backchannel” negotiations and that no ransoms had been paid.
This raises the question of what was offered to secure the girls’ release. The Nigerian government held several Boko Haram commanders who could have been handed over as barter.
Other aspects of the abduction and release remain murky. According to an Amnesty International report, the army and police had been warned that Boko Haram would abduct the girls and made no attempt to stop them.
Focusing on schoolgirl abductions distorts the view of life in Nigeria | Chitra Nagarajan
They also had been warned that they would be brought back on Wednesday morning, according to Dapchi residents, and positioned themselves at the school they had been taken from, thinking that they would be dropped off there.
However, their kidnappers drove them into the centre of the village, close to the police station.
Neither the military nor the police attempted to apprehend the militants, who even stopped to change a tyre before leaving Dapchi, according to Mataba.
Parents of the Chibok girls, kidnapped four years earlier in a neighbouring state to worldwide condemnation, happened to be in Dapchi to commiserate with their counterparts and urge them to be patient.
The Chibok girls were taken before Boko Haram split into several factions, when it was led by Abubakar Shekau, a notorious militant who vowed to “sell them in the market” and who is still believed to have some 100 of the girls in his custody, having traded others for vast sums of money, according to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, the released 105 schoolgirls Thursday landed Abuja in a chattered military aircraft for rehabilitation before they return to their different homes.
