Buhari Tells 100-Plus Girls Freed by Boko Haram to Follow Their Dreams

Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has been meeting more than 100 girls after their dramatic release this week by Boko Haram, abducted from their boarding school dormitories in the town of Dapchi in the northeast.

Buhari held the meeting at the presidential villa in the capital, Abuja, Friday with scores of Dapchi schoolgirls and one lone boy freed with them on Wednesday. He told the girls seized in the Feb. 19 mass abduction by an ISIS-affiliated faction of Boko Haram to embrace the future and pursue their dreams, without fear.

“To the rescued students, we want to assure you as our daughters that you will freely live and pursue your dreams in Nigeria, without fear of violence or molestation.”

Buhari’s administration, which was criticized for a confused initial response to the attack on the school last month, said in a statement the Dapchi girls were returned “through back-channel efforts and with the help of some friends of the country and that it was unconditional.” A statement said the government did not pay a ransom nor swap captive insurgents for the release of the schoolgirls.

Earlier Buhari’s government said it would pursue negotiations with — rather than a military offensive against — Boko Haram to try to secure the girls’ freedom. This shift in policy comes a year before key elections in Nigeria and public opinion is crucial, though Buhari has not indicated whether he will seek a second term.

Comparisons have been made between two multiple abductions by Boko Haram at girls’ boarding schools in the past four years — the first in Chibok in April 2014 under a previous government, when 276 girls were kidnapped from their dorms and, under Buhari’s watch, in Dapchi last month, for which the president has drawn a stern rebuke from the public. More than a hundred Chibok schoolgirls remain unaccounted for almost four years after their abduction.

In both instances heavily-armed gunmen have stormed residential school premises and were able to capture many students, with no resistance from Nigeria’s security forces.

On a visit to Dapchi last week, Buhari had promised the girls would be returned. Five of the schoolgirls reportedly died in captivity over the past month. Four have broken limbs and are in wheelchairs. Speaking for her schoolmates, one freed girl, Fatima, expressed gratitude to President Buhari for his intervention, saying, “On behalf of all of us, we want to thank you for saving our lives and bringing us home.”

But one of the abducted Dapchi students, 15-year-old, Leah Sharibu, remains in Boko Haram captivity. Leah Sharibu was the only Christian among the 110 girls kidnapped from Dapchi that Monday night in February. Her freed schoolmates have been telling her parents she refused to convert to Islam, at the insistence of Boko Haram. So the extremist group refused to release her. Leah’s father, Nathan Sharibu, told NPR by phone from Dapchi that he’s proud of his daughter for resisting the demands of Boko Haram fighters.