Parents identify 77 abducted Chibok school girls in Boko Haram video

It was a day of anguish and tears yesterday when parents of the kidnapped schoolgirls and their classmates converged on the Government House, Maiduguri, Borno State, to identify the girls who were shown in a video released by Boko Haram on Monday.

The exercise which was painstaking and lasted throughout the day and last night, however, yielded some results, as parents, girls from Chibok secondary school and Borno State Government officials, were able to identify 77 of the abducted girls who featured in the video.

Shortly after the terror sect released the video, the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, had directed that it should be reproduced and distributed so that the parents of the girls could identify their daughters.

But for other parents who could not identify their daughters, the pain and sorrow continued, with speculation rising that some of the girls who appeared in the video may have been kidnapped before April 14 from other communities in Borno.

The leader of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, had released a video on Monday showing over a hundred of the kidnapped girls who are believed to have been abducted from their secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, a month ago.

He had said that the girls, all dressed in the Muslim hijab and reciting verses of the Qu’ran, would only be released if the federal government accepts to exchange them for members of his sect who have been in government detention facilities for years.