Reports from Chibok show that 306 days after the Chibok girls were abducted from their secondary school by armed Boko Haram insurgents, 13 of the parents of those girls have since died due to stress-related illnesses.
An online report by the Associated Press (AP), while saying that hundreds of other girls and boys have been abducted in different villages across the three northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe since the Chibok incident, added that some parents have also died though violence.
Furthermore, AP said the Boko Haram extremist group now sees mass kidnappings as a shining symbol of success, and has abducted hundreds of other girls, boys and women. Consequently, the militants brag to their new captives about the surrender of the Chibok girls, their conversion to Islam and their marriage to fighters.
“They told me the Chibok girls have a new life where they learn to fight,” says Abigail John, 15, who was held by Boko Haram for more than four weeks before escaping. “They said we should be like them and accept Islam.”
Abigail is one of three girls interviewed by some reporters from the Associated Press.
The report said that while Abigail was telling her story, she was fidgeting and looking down at her hands, clasped in her lap. She recounts how one fighter, nicknamed ’Tall Arab”, was set on marrying her. She pleaded that she was too young, but was told, “Do you think you are better than those Chibok girls that we kidnapped?”
The man told her the Chibok girls were “enjoying their matrimonial homes,” she remembers. He also said the Chibok girls had turned against their parents, and were “ready to slit their parents’ throats” if they ever saw them again.
He added that the the Chibok girls were all Muslims now, and some were training as fighters to fight women, which Boko Haram men are not supposed to do.
The girls had no idea whether the militants were telling the truth or making up stories to taunt their victims, but Abigail says the fighters enjoyed relating how they had whipped and slapped the Chibok girls until they submitted.
She added that when the Nigerian air force dropped a bomb on the house where she and others were confined, she tried to escape. She stated that she wrestled with the fighters, but they broke her arm and hauled her off to another house.
She and others were eventually able to escape and made their way to safety, aided by some villagers who saw them.
However, all the girls interviewed by AP said they were not raped, despite the fears of some villagers. Instead, the fighters said they wanted the girls to remain virgins until they were married off.
While dozens of the Chibok girls escaped on their own after their kidnapping, 219 are still missing. Nigeria’s military initially feared any action could lead to the girls being killed. But villagers reported last week that air force jets have begun bombing the Sambisa Forest-the area where some of the girls are still being held captive, according to some of the escaped girls.
President Goodluck Jonathan, had on Wednesday, during a live media chat told the nation that the Chibok girls would be recovered alive in a few weeks.