Nigeria: Parents of Missing Girls Continue to Pray for Their Safe Return
- Updated Apr 20, 2017
It has been three years since the kidnapping of the nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram militants. The parents of the girls continue to have faith and to pray for their homecoming, but they are also taking action.
According to SRNNews.com, several of the girls have escaped their captors. A few others have reportedly died. Others escaped but had become pregnant with the babies of their captors. Twenty-one of the girls were released in October in addition to the few others who escaped on their own.
Activists in the Nigerian capital of Abuja recently held a rally to push the government not to stall its efforts of securing the girls’ release. More than 200 of the Chibok girls remain missing.
“It is still a nightmare to me. It is still fresh as if it happened last night,” said Rebecca Samuel, whose daughter Sarah remains missing. “The government is trying, but I believe they can do more than what they are doing.”
Although Boko Haram militants announced that 83 more girls would be released “very soon,” this has yet to happen.
The government is reportedly in negotiations to secure the girls’ release, but have encountered challenges, although details have not been revealed.
“It is deeply shocking that three years after this deplorable and devastating act of violence, the majority of the girls remain missing,” read a statement this week from a half-dozen United Nations experts who visited Nigeria last year.
Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com
Publication date: April 20, 2017
