I Never Expected to Suffer Like This in My Life, Says Chibok Girl

 Chibok girls

A heartbreaking new video of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram insurgents shows the girls bravely speaking out about their ordeal for the first time.
The footage, not released publicly, but seen by The Mail yesterday, was taken in a jungle clearing a month after their abduction.

More than 250 girls were taken in a raid on their school in Chibok, Borno State, on April 14 by terrorists.

The girls in the video look healthy, but it is understood that fraught negotiations are under way to broker the release of several pupils who have fallen ill, including one with a broken wrist.

In the video, eight girls, dressed in their home-made school uniforms of pale blue gingham, pleaded for  their release as they stand courageously in front of the camera.
They are clearly scared, upset and trying to be brave.

Each of them walked in turn to a spot in front of a white sheet fixed to a crude frame between the trees.

Four of them were heard clearly in Hausa language, stating that they were taken by force and that they are hungry.

A tall girl, aged about 18, said tearfully: “My family will be so worried.”
Another, speaking softly, said: “I never expected to suffer like this in my life.” A third said: “They have taken us away by force.”

The fourth girl complained: “We are not getting enough food.”
The video, taken by an intermediary on May 19, had been shown to President Goodluck Jonathan.  It was intended to serve as ‘proof of life’ for the girls and to encourage the president to accede to the terrorists’ demands.

Two earlier videos showed the girls seated on the ground, dressed in hijabs, reciting the Koran, and Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, declaring he would sell them into slavery, or marry them off to their kidnappers, if members of his sect were not released from prison. Pressure from the international community and criticism of the president’s slow response to the kidnapping have led to a series of contradictory pronouncements from his government.

Ministers have declared they will not negotiate with Boko Haram or consider the release of prisoners, while official spokesmen have said ‘the window is always open for dialogue’.

Scathing condemnations of Nigeria’s failure to address the menace of Boko Haram, ever since a proposed peace deal failed last August – leading to the extension of a state of emergency in three northern states – continued worldwide last week.

The Chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Robert Menendez, said Nigeria had been ‘tragically and unacceptably slow’ to begin a search.
Others said the clock really being watched by Nigerian politicians was not the six weeks and counting since the kidnap but the 11 months to the country’s elections.

Opposition politician, Nuhu Ribadu, has accused the government of  ‘total failure’.
He described how fraught the negotiation process had been.

“One of that small group of girls is ill and we had hoped we might convince the commander of the group holding her that she should be released so we could give her medical treatment.

“There are other girls who are not well and we have come close to  having them released but their captors fear a trap in which they would be captured in the handover process.
“One girl has what I assume is a broken wrist as they demonstrate to me how she holds her hand. I have been told that others are sick and in need of medical attention,” he said.

A military source said: “This has been a race against time from the minute they were captured. As soon as the girls left Nigerian soil, it was always going to be more difficult.
“The government made no attempt to rescue them until a month after they were taken. Now the situation gets more serious by the day.

‘Any sort of attempt to get to them would have to be cleared by the  governments of the other nations.” Sources said announcement by the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Mashall Alex Badeh, may have been the result of government officials seeing the new unpublished video. They may have been able to persuade Boko Haram’s intermediary to provide details of the location. It is believed the hostages had been split into at least four groups.

Dr Stephen Davis, an Australian who had advised three Nigerian presidents on how to negotiate with the country’s militant groups, has spent the past month trying to help free the girls. “The vast majority of the  Chibok girls are not being held in Nigeria.

“They are in camps across the Nigerian border in Cameroun, Chad and Niger. I say the ‘vast majority’ as I know a small group was confirmed to me to be in Nigeria last week when we sought to have them released,” he said.