Parents of the missing Chibok girls are said to be seeing their missing daughters for the first time, two years after their abduction in a news video said to have been sent to negotiators by their captors as a “proof of life.”
The Cable Network News (CNN) said a copy of the video, which it obtained, had been seen by negotiators and some members of Nigeria’s government.
“But no one had shown the parents, until now,” CNN said.
According to CNN, one of the parents, “Rifkatu Ayuba, catches sight of her long-lost, desperately missed, now 17-year-old.
“My Saratu!” she wails, reaching out to a laptop screen, the closest she’s been to her child in two years. She is desperate to comfort her little girl, but helpless.”
CNN said Saratu Ayuba is one of 15 girls seen in the recording shown to some of the families for the first time at an emotional meeting this week.
Wearing a purple abaya, with a patterned brown scarf covering her hair, Saratu stares directly into the camera.
“I felt like removing her from the screen. If I could, I would have removed her from the screen,” CNN quoted Ayuba to have told its reporters, saying she was desperate to pluck Saratu from the location where she was being held and bring her home.
The video, according to CNN, was believed to have been made last December, as part of negotiations between the government and Boko Haram.
The American news medium said it was released by someone keen to give the girls’ parents hope that some of their daughters were still alive, and to motivate the government to help release them.
While watching the video, the CNN, describing the scenario, said the parents “crowded around, their eyes glued to the computer screen, three of the girls’ mothers weep and hug each other.”
Narrating how the parents were persuaded to leave their home to watch the video, CNN said some of the parents: Rifkatu Ayuba, Yana Galang and Mary Ishaya made the 77-mile (125km) journey from Chibok to Maiduguri reluctantly, not knowing what was in store; accustomed to endless media requests and intrusions into their grief, they arrived weary and impatient.
“But this time it was different: there was a rare of glimmer of hope.”
According to CNN, “we told them we had important information to share with them about their daughters.
Then we explained that we had a video of girls we believed to be their daughters and we wanted their help to verify it.
“Clad in boldly-printed headscarves and wrappers, the trio sat in the courtyard of a Maiduguri hotel and watched intently as we hit ‘play.’
“Within seconds, their worry-lined faces crumpled, the bottled-up pain of the past two years flowed freely.
Hardly able to speak through the tears, Ayuba and Ishaya were able to point out their daughters, Saratu and Hauwa, in the crowd of young women on the screen.
“But for Galang, there was no such reward for her journey. She looked and looked, but her daughter, Rifqata, was not among the captives shown in the video.
“Her heartrending sobs as she came to realise this were difficult to hear.”
According to CNN Galang said: “We have seen enough,” she said eventually. “We know that the girls are alive and they are hidden. We are not worried. Our daughters look well.
“We have heard a lot of stories before but this video confirms that they are alive. The government should negotiate with Boko Haram.”
According to CNN, to the mothers, there is comfort in this at least to know that, even after two years, there is still a chance the girls will be brought home to their families.
“I didn’t see my daughter but I now have more hope that she is alive. You can see what is yours on the screen but you can’t get it. All we want is our daughters,” one of the mothers told CNN.
In the two-minute video also shown on CNN network with their parents seen seated in front of a laptop, the girls were seen with their hair covered and wearing long, flowing robes, line up against a dirty yellow wall.
As seen in the video, the girls show no obvious signs of maltreatment.
The video echoes the voice of a man behind the camera who fires off questions at the girls as the camera focuses in on each of them: “What’s your name? Was that your name at school? Where were you taken from?”
One by one, each girl calmly states her name and explains that she was taken from Chibok Government Secondary School. Only the occasional hesitation betrays a flicker of fear and emotion.
Towards the end of the two-minute video clip, one of the girls identified as Naomi Zakaria, makes a final appeal, which the CNN described as “apparently scripted” appeal directed to whoever is watching, urging the Nigerian authorities to help reunite the girls with their families.
She said: “I am speaking on 25 December 2015, on behalf of all the Chibok girls and we are all well,” she says, stressing the word “all.” Her intonation seems to imply that the 15 teens seen in the video have been chosen to represent the group as a whole.
It has been two years since the Chibok girls were stolen from their families. For the first time, we see some of the girls alive in a video obtained by CNN. This is who they are.
“The date given by Naomi matches information embedded in the video, suggesting it was filmed on Christmas Day, though whether that’s true or whether the day was picked deliberately is unknown,” CNN said.
The girls who were Christians, according to CNN are believed to have been forced to convert to Islam by their terrorist captors.
It would be recalled that the schoolgirls’ kidnapping and a lack of progress in tracking down and returning the girls, sparked mass protests in Nigeria and across the world, with luminaries including United States First Lady Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai joining the social media campaign to #BringBackOurGirls.
According to CNN, “the Nigerian government said it has a copy of the “proof of life” video, and that it is in negotiations with those who supplied it to secure the girls’ release, but said it remains unable to confirm or reject the recording’s authenticity.
The CNN quoted Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, as saying “there were concerns that the girls did not appear to have changed sufficiently, that they are not as different as one might expect, given the two years that have elapsed since their disappearance.”
CNN said it spoke to a classmate of the girls seen in the footage, who confirmed the identity of several of her friends.
“The soft-spoken teen, whose identity we will not reveal for her safety, was supposed to be at the school that Sunday night to sit for examinations along with the other girls, but made a last minute decision to go home, from where she could hear the school being attacked,” CNN said.
“We ran into the bush and stayed there for a month,” CNN quoted a classmate of the missing Chibok girls to have said.
CNN said “watching the video, she becomes emotional, exclaiming ‘Oh my God!’ as she recognises a close friend, points out another who was in the same hostel as her, and identifies one of the school’s prefects, a leader in her class.
“While she considers herself one of the “lucky ones,” the teenager said she still has nightmares about the experience.”
“If I hear something on the news about them, it makes me have bad dreams and I cry,” she confides in CNN.
