The schoolgirls kidnapped by the Boko Haram jihadist group in Dapchi, northeastern Nigeria, were reunited with their families on Sunday after spending nearly five weeks in captivity.
The 105 girls, covered head to toe in burkas, arrived aboard five buses in the town of Dapchi, in Yobe state, where they were greeted by their parents at the boarding school from where they were snatched on February 19.
After their release on Wednesday they had spent three days in the national capital Abuja and were greeted by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Kachalla Bukar, the father of one of the girls who is spokesperson for the parents, said they were flown to the major northern city of Maiduguri from Abuja, then transferred under military escort to Dapchi.
Top officials were on hand for a solemn ceremony in which the parents regained custody of their children.
“My joy knows no bounds,” Mai Saleh Gaji told AFP after being reunited with both his daughter and his grand-daughter. “The nightmare of the kidnap will not deter me from sending them to school,” he added.
But for Ali Gashomu, the kidnap of his daughter just hours after she was enrolled at the school for the first time had left him “traumatised and terrified” and undecided about whether she should return.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed said the girls were released following negotiations with the insurgents and that no ransom payment or prisoner swap was carried out.
“All they demanded was a ceasefire that would open a safe corridor for returning the girls,” he said Sunday, adding that the week-long truce began on March 19.
The girls were among 111 seized last month, of whom five died apparently during the violent hostage-taking or in the trucks that took them away.
Their release leaves one schoolgirl, Leah Sharibu, still in the hands of the kidnappers, reportedly because she is a Christian who has refused to convert to Islam.
Buhari on Friday pledged to do “everything in our power” to obtain Leah’s freedom.
Authorities earlier expressed optimism that she would be released at the weekend.
But on Sunday, a spokesperson for the national police said that comments by national police chief Ibrahim Idris had been “misunderstood and misquoted”.
The police “reiterates that it has no information yet on the release of the last Dapchi schoolgirl,” he said.
