Boko Haram releases 76 abducted girls, don’t put your daughters in school again
Boko Haram jihadist releases 76 abducted girls of Dapchi 76 of the 110 schoolgirls who were abducted from the northeastern town of Dapchi in February have been released by the Boko Haram jihadists on Wednesday. “The girls were released around 3am through back-channel efforts and with the help of some friends of the country,” said Mohammed, Information Minister. The number of freed girls may increase “because the girls were not handed over to anyone but dropped off in Dapchi,” he said. “We did it out of pity. And don’t ever put your daughters in school again,” the extremists told the residents of Dapchi. Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” in the Hausa language. The Dapchi kidnapping on February 19 conjured painful memories of a similar abduction in Chibok in April 2014, when more than 200 girls were taken. That brought Boko Haram -- whose name translates from Hausa as “Western education is forbidden” -- worldwide notoriety at a time when it controlled swathes of territory in Nigeria’s northeast. Boko Haram is increasingly using kidnapping as a means to fund their operations in Nigeria and the remote Lake Chad region. The jihadist uprising has claimed some 20,000 lives and forced at least 2.6 million to flee their homes since 2009. -PTC News
