WEDDING CHANNEL AFRICA

Nearly all of the 110 school girls kidnapped by militants in the town of Dapchi last month have been returned. Government officials said at least 101 of the girls were reunited with their families after the release. The girls were later flown to Abuja to meet with the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

Reports suggests that at least five girls died during the attack and one Christian girl was withheld because she refused to denounce her faith.

On February 19, 2018, 5:30pm, 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years old were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group from the Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, located in Bulabulin, Yunusari Local Government area of Yobe State, in the northeast part of Nigeria.

The government had been strongly criticised after the abduction on 19 February, amid reports that the military had pulled out of Dapchi the day before.

Nigeria had already suffered the Chibok kidnapping, when 276 girls were snatched from a school in April 2014. More than 100 are still missing.

And while many parents celebrated, the father of one girl said she was being kept by the militants – thought to be from the Boko Haram group – because she refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. In a radio interview he said he was happy that she had not renounced her faith.

Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, told Reuters that “no ransom was paid”. Mr Lai Mohammed said the girls were taken to hospital in Dapchi, and they would be quarantined and offered psychological counselling before going back to school.

The European Union in a statement by its spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ray, expressed relief over the release of the girls commending the president on a job well done.