After one month in captivity, 104 students of the Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State were yesterday freed by their abductors.
One other girl and a boy were freed by the insurgents along with the schoolgirls.
Unfortunately, five of the 110 abducted schoolgirls died in the custody of Boko Haram terrorists.
One of the students, a Christian, is said to be in custody because she failed to convert to Islam. The girls were abducted on February 19.
Boko Haram members returned the schoolgirls a few minutes after soldiers were withdrawn from the town.
The fighters drove the girls to Dapchi yesterday morning in trucks, dropped them and left the town.
One of the rescued girls, Fatima Makinta Liman, said that they spent about four days on the road before they reached Dapchi.
She added that they were escorted by some Boko Haram members.
The government did not make any mention of deaths yesterday.
The Chairman of the Dapchi Abducted Schoolgirls Parents Association, Mr. Bashir Manzo, said that five of the girls died in the captivity of the terrorists.
One of the freed girls, Khadija Grema, told Reuters how five of their schoolgirls died in custody.
“About five are dead, but it was not as if they killed them – it was because of the stress and trauma that made them tired and weak.
“They didn’t harm us. They were giving us food, very good food. We didn’t have any problem.
“One is still with them because she is a Christian,” Grema said.
Grema said that she didn’t know why they were returned. “I don’t know why they brought us back, but they said because we are children of Muslims,” she said.
One of the freed girls, according to BBC, said the five had been crushed to death as they were herded into vehicles and driven away.
The girl said they were taken into the bush, to an “enclosed place”. The girl said they had to cook their own food.
Muhammad Bursari said his niece, Hadiza Muhammed, who was one of the freed girls, told him the remaining student was still in captivity because she had refused to convert to Islam.
The father of the girl who was said to be in Boko Haram custody because she refused to convert from Christianity to Islam, Sharibu Nata, told BBC that he was happy that his daughter had not renounced her faith.
A resident of Dapchi said that the group first dropped off one of the girls at a nearby village, then drove into the centre of Dapchi to drop the rest.
The military did not allow journalists into town. They were forced to stay about two kilometres from the city centre.
A source, who was in Dapchi, observed a motorcade which came into the town ostensibly to deliver the girls.
One of the parents of the abducted girls, Mallam Makinta Liman, said that the insurgents returned the girls in the early hours of yesterday, a few minutes after soldiers were withdrawn from the town.
It was learnt that Boko Haram members gathered the abducted schoolgirls in one place and preached to them for about 30 minutes in Dapchi.
