Report: Chibok girls in Boko Haram captivity not willing to return home

The Chibok girls still in Boko Haram captivity have reportedly refused to return home.

While 163 of the girls have been returned, over 100 are believed to be in the custody of the terrorist group.

The police on Wednesday paraded eight persons suspected to be involved in the kidnap of the 276 students from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok Borno state.

Abba Kyari, assistant police commissioner of Lagos, told CNN that Mayinta Modu, a Boko Haram commander among those paraded, said the remaining girls have been married to Boko Haram commanders and are not coming back.

According to Modu, the girls have “accepted the Boko Haram doctrine and don’t see any reason to leave their husbands”.

Modu reportedly told the police that he was one of the Boko Haram commanders who “coordinated and led” the kidnapping in April 2014.

“They said many of the girls have accepted the Boko Haram doctrine and don’t see any reason to leave their husbands. It’s only those that were desperate to come that were released in that swap deal,” Kyari said.

“They confessed that they were part of the group that kidnapped the Chibok girls. One of them, a commander said they were over a 100 members of the militant group took part in that abduction.”

Ahmad Salkida, a journalist known to have access to the leadership of Boko Haram, had in April said only 30 of the girls were still alive.

Salkida said most of them died as a result of crossfire and bombardments of the security forces. He also said the girls still alive are no longer under the control of Abubakar Shekau, leader of the sect.

He said they have been married off, adding that their fate can only be determined by their husbands.

Salkida explained that no negotiation, including ransom, could secure their release, except they are divorced from their husbands.

In June 2017, Aisha, wife of a suspected Boko Haram commander, abandoned her family home in Maiduguri, Borno, taking along her son.

Aisha was one of the girls rescued by the army in a raid on the militants’ Sambisa forest base in 2016.

She was one of the 70 women and children who finished a nine-month deradicalisation programme in February 2017.