(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Boko Haram militants yesterday released a new video purporting to show at least 14 of the Chibok schoolgirls whose mass kidnapping nearly four years ago became a symbol of NIgeria's brutal conflict.
But despite a concerted global campaign for their release, and talks between the government and the militants, the girls shown in the recording vowed not to return to their parents.
The 20-minute-long video is the first since May last year, when another woman who also claimed to be among the 219 seized from the town in Borno state said she wanted to stay.
Both videos will compound the suffering of the girls' families and friends but also indicate the extent to which they may have become influenced by their captors. All of those who were shown on camera were wearing black or blue hijabs and at least three were carrying babies.
One of the students, her face covered by a veil, said: 'We are the Chibok girls that you cry for us to return to you. By the grace of Allah, we will not return to you. Poor souls, we pity our other Chibok girls who chose to return to Nigeria. Allah blessed you and brought you to the caliphate for you to worship your creator. But instead you chose to return to unbelief.
It was not clear when or where the latest message, in Hausa and the local Chibok language, was recorded or whether those who appeared on camera were under duress.
The woman speaking said the Boko Haram factional leader Abubakar Shekau had 'married us off.
'We live in comfort. He provides us with everything. We lack nothing, she added.
Shekau was also seen, firing a heavy machine gun and making a 13-minute-long sermon in which he said the remaining girls had 'understood the folly of secular education.
The video also shows a group of police women, who were also abducted in Borno state last year.
Boko Haram's name broadly translates into English from the Hausa that is widely spoken in northern Nigeria as 'Western education is sinful.
The group has repeatedly attacked and destroyed schools teaching a secular curriculum in its campaign to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
The militants seized 276 students from the Government Girls Secondary School in the mostly Christian town on April 14, 2014, triggering global condemnation.
Fifty-nine of them managed to escape in the hours that followed.
A campaign for the release of their classmates has had the support of Hollywood stars to global leaders.
A total of 107 girls have now been either found, rescued or released as part of government negotiations with the Islamic State group affiliate.
They have now returned to the northeast and are back in education at the American University of Nigeria, in the Adamawa state capital, Yola.
On January 4, the Nigerian army said it had rescued another of the girls' classmates in the Pulka region of Borno, near the border with Cameroon.
Boko Haram has used kidnapping as a weapon of war in the conflict, which has killed at least 20,000 people in northeast Nigeria and displaced more than 2.6mn.
Buhari vows to punish all those behind ethnic violence
Nigeria will punish all those behind an outbreak of deadly clashes between cattle herders and farmers, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday, pushing back at accusations that he failed to take action against members of his own ethnic group.
At least 83 people have been killed since the start of the new year in violence between the mainly Christian farmers and the semi-nomadic herders, who are mostly Muslims from Buhari's Fulani ethnic group.
The outbreak of violence, mostly in the central state of Benue, has become increasingly political ahead of elections in February 2019, with Buhari's opponents accusing him of failing to take action against the herdsmen.
'President Buhari said all those involved in the conflict that culminated in loss of lives would not escape justice, including any illegally armed militia in the state, said a statement released by Nigeria's presidency, after Buhari spoke to a delegation of Benue political leaders.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is home to 250 ethnic groups, about evenly divided between Christians who mainly live in the south and Muslims who mainly live in the north.
Central states such as Benue have often seen violence over religious, ancestral and cultural differences.
Farmers caught up in the clashes say herdsmen, who roam West Africa in search of pasture and often travel in and out of Nigeria through porous borders, are armed with guns and cutlasses.
Groups representing herdsmen have also accused farmers of violent attacks in the last few years.
'I assure you that the police, the Department of State Service and other security agencies had been directed to ensure that all those behind the mayhem get punished, Buhari told the delegation, according to the statement.
Those who attended the meeting in the capital, Abuja, included the Benue state governor, members of parliament and traditional rulers.
Buhari, a former military ruler who was elected in 2015 after vowing to improve security, has not yet said whether he will seek a new term next year.
Last week his spokesman said the suggestion that Buhari was not taking action regarding the herdsmen because of his ethnicity was 'disturbing, adding that such clashes predated Buhari's administration.
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