JOURNALIST CONFIRMS THAT THE CHIBOK SCHOOL GIRLS ARE STILL ALIVE AND CAN BE RETURNED TO NIGERIA

JOURNALIST AHMAD SALKIDA

In what could be termed good news, Ahmad Salkida, a Nigerian journalist who has close contacts within the Boko Haram group and had worked for the Daily Trust and Premium Times publications in Nigeria before fleeing to Dubai about 2 years ago today stated that 219 school girls who were kidnapped from Chibok, Nigeria about 626 days are alive.

Mr. Salkida gave this information on his blog Salkida.com while he was reacting to President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement on Wednesday’s maiden Presidential Media Chat where he stated that the Federal Government had no reliable intelligence report as to the location of the girls or if they were alive or not. He went on to confirm that the Chibok girls were alive but did not state whether or not they were still all together in one location.

He stated that he was confident of his information on the girls having confirmed same from different reliable sources and said President Buhari could have instant video and audio evidence to corroborate their being alive if he so desired. He said there was no need for the President to remain clueless about the girls as he had the might to confirm their existence, except he did not want to. He even tried to allege that the President may already have received confirmation of the girls’ state.

Mr. Salkida called on the Nigerian government to be more resolved in tackling the issue when he stated that “I am confident  that Chibok girls and other captives can return to their families if  government is half as strong-willed as some of the girls in captivity that have refused to be married out or give up their faith. The girls would have never backed out of any process, no matter how irritating it is.”

He said the Nigerian government position that it could not exchange Boko Haram prisoners for the girls was no longer tenable as such transactions had been successfully carried out by other countries like in the United States with the US government exchanging five Taliban leaders from the Guatanamo Bay Prison for American, Sgt Bowe Bergdahl captured in Afghanistan or the Cameroon government who released some Boko Haram militants in exchange for a French family captured by the group in 2013.